S PAIN 

OF TO-DAY 



JOSEPH 

THOMPSON 

SHAW 




Class X) ■ I 

C r 

Book. j-k 



Copyright^ . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



SPAIN OF TO-DAY 




The Mecca for Pleasant Suxday Afterxooxs 



SPAIN OF TODAY 

A NARRATIVE GUIDE TO 

THE COUNTRY OF 

THE DONS 

WITH SUGGESTIONS 
FOR TRAVELLERS 

By 
JOSEPH THOMPSON SHAW 



ILLUSTRATED 




THE GRAFTON PRESS 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 




St 



Copyright, 1909, 
By The Grafton Press 



L13KARY ofCoNGPESS 
Two Cooif •= -' 

JUN IB ibU9 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Suggestions for Travellers 9 

Biarritz and San Sebastien £1 

Madrid 31 

Toledo 45 

Sights in Madrid 54 

El Escorial — Madrid 64 

Cordoba 80 

Sevilla 94 

Cadiz 114 

Malaga 119 

Granada 125 

Valencia 140 

Barcelona 146 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

" The Mecca for Pleasant Sunday Afternoons " 

Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

The Casino at San Sebastien 28 

PUERTA DEL SOL. THE Old ROMAN GATE IN TOLEDO 46 

Royal Palace in Madrid 76- 

The Mezquita in Cordoba 86 s 

The Giralda and Royal Alcazares in Sevilla . .102 

Types of the South 106 

Cadiz Harbor 116 

A Street Scene in Malaga 122 

The Alhambra — Granada 132^ 



SUGGESTIONS FOR TRAVELLERS 

THIS little volume is not a work of fiction. 
On the contrary, it is compiled from memo- 
randa written each evening after we had re- 
turned from a day of exploration and sight- 
seeing. The impressions, therefore, were gained on 
the spot and were not drawn from memory and a 
study of notes after our return to America. They 
represent the country and the people as we saw them, 
and their commendation as a picture of scenes and 
conditions drawn without glamour has encouraged me 
to hope that their presentation here may be welcome 
as a plain description of a country a little out of the 
ordinary line of travel. 

It is not entirely a trip of pleasure to see the whole 
of Spain. Trains are frequently slow and sometimes 
lacking modern conveniences of comfort; the waits 
are interminable, while even in the larger cities the 
hotel accommodations are not always pleasant, and 
everywhere the food is of a character to which a 
stranger does not become easily accustomed. Un- 
less the greatest care be taken, indigestion is the 



10 Suggestions for Travellers 

least of the certain results to follow. There is an 
unappetizing taste to almost every article of edi- 
bility, cooked or uncooked, that makes one long for 
some simple home-made dish. Even so secure an ob- 
ject as a boiled egg seems infused with the essence 
of the national herb, while the olives appear to gather 
it in from the very atmosphere. After a few trials 
one goes discouragedly through the list, seeking the 
plainest fare, quite satisfied to leave unsolved the 
mysteries of some wonderfully odorous casserole. 

A trip to Spain should most assuredly be thor- 
oughly planned before the start, and not be con- 
sidered as a side- journey from Paris or the Riviera. 
It should be borne in mind that for all practical pur- 
poses Spain is nearly a circle with the geographical 
center just without the gates of Madrid. From this 
spot, roughly speaking, four hundred miles in any 
direction takes one to the periphery; to Gibraltar 
on the south, Lisbon on the west, San Sebastien on 
the north, and to Barcelona on the east. Thus 
Madrid is considerably out of the line of travel un- 
less one wishes to go directly through the country. 

The easiest way in which to see a part of the 
country — and the most enjoyable part for that mat- 
ter — is, of course, to approach it from Gibraltar, pro- 
ceeding thence to Seville and up the Mediterranean 
coast. This would include, also, Malaga, Granada 
— which is inland — Valencia and Barcelona. Likewise 
this route may well be reversed and steamer taken 
from Gibraltar. Such a trip, taken in the Spring 
when the foliage is most beautiful and the festivals 



Suggestions for Travellers 11 

bring the people out in their gayest colors and hap- 
piest moods, would give one a most favorable impres- 
sion of the Spanish country, but would not, at the 
same time, give a true picture of the land or the race. 
Yet this is the route that I should follow if I were 
merely on pleasure bent, and I purposely omit Mad- 
rid, for while there are many things worth seeing 
were one actually in the capital, still only the incom- 
parable gallery of the Prado really warrants the 
tedious ride thereto. 

With all the beauties of the south and the towns 
of the coast in mind, it is, nevertheless, the note of 
sombreness that strikes loudest in my memories of 
Spain, and this was gained only by pursuing the 
course which our most excellent courier mapped out 
for us, through the heart of the desolate country. 
By comparison the brighter parts of the Peninsula 
seemed all the more attractive, but cannot entirely 
blot from the mind the vast wastes of the north. 
There, in appearance, the people are akin to the 
land, swarthy, rugged, burned brown as the soil, and 
not even picturesquely attractive. The bright, care- 
free faces belong to the south and the coast provinces, 
and it is there one should confine his travels if he 
would not be depressed by the sight of a wasting 
people. 

Spain can be done expensively or otherwise. One 
can time one's trips from town to town to escape the 
expresses which are far more costly than the ordinary 
trains of local accommodation. The latter have the 
three classes usual to European trains, and the Span- 



12 Suggestions for Travellers 

iard ordinarily travels third for the reason, it is said, 
that there is no fourth class. However, the third class 
should not be attempted, although the second is not 
so bad, especially for short runs when a compartment 
can be obtained alone. The Spanish train, with first 
and second class carriages, is not unlike those encoun- 
tered in England and elsewhere on the Continent. The 
compartments stretch clear across the car and have 
upholstered seats facing each other, each accommo- 
dating four and even five passengers on a side. There 
are usually four compartments to a car, and for easy 
riding choose those not over the trucks. Unlike the 
English carriages, however, along the outside of the 
car is a running board and often when the train is at 
top speed, perhaps at the rate of twenty-five miles to 
the hour, you are surprised by the sudden appearance 
of the conductor, who unlocks your door and enters 
for your tickets. 

The cars are heated (?) in cool weather by flat, 
metal foot-warmers filled at the start with hot water. 
If you are travelling in the cold months do not fail 
to take plenty of warm wraps. You will find your 
steamer rug as welcome here as on board ship. 

The sleeping cars have the same arrangement of 
compartments, which are shorter than those of the 
day coaches, permitting a passage at the side of the 
car in which seats let down at frequent spaces, al- 
lowing, in the day time, a much appreciated change 
from the tedious seats of the stuffy compartments. 

The Sud Express, the train which runs between 
Paris and the south of Spain, is quite an institution 



Suggestions for Travellers 13 

by itself, particularly where it runs through Spanish 
country. It leaves Paris daily, and with few stops 
covers in a little over twelve hours the run to Irun, 
which is the Spanish town on the frontier where pas- 
sengers pass through the customs and take another 
train on the broader gauged Spanish tracks. Re- 
turning, the north-bound train disembarks the travel- 
ler at Hendaye, the French border town, where one's 
baggage is examined by French customs officials. 

The matter of passing the customs is not an onerous 
one, especially if you have a smattering of French or 
Spanish, and reply to the inevitable queries, " Have 
you anything to declare? Have you tobacco, cigars, 
liquors, perfumes?" I have found it most desirable 
in England and France, as well as in Spain, to place 
any articles of doubt at the top of one piece of bag- 
gage, break open the box of cigars, unstop the 
liq — perfume, and indifferently invite inspection. 

If you are accompanied by a courier, leave it all 
to him and do not complain at the item for pourboire 
in his bill. 

From Irun the Sud Express runs to Madrid and 
the south, while one section is cut off at Medina del 
Campo, a junction well to the north of Madrid, and 
sent to Lisbon. 

The accommodations on the Sud Express are really 
excellent. The berths are comfortable and the Wagon- 
Restaurant affords a comparatively good meal a la 
table d'hote. There is, however, an extra charge for 
this train amounting to fully one- third more than the 
fare by ordinary train, but for long runs, such as the 



14 Suggestions for Travellers 

fifty-hour trip from Paris to Seville, the Sud Express 
is certainly worth while. 

The best seasons in which to visit Spain are either 
in the early spring or late fall; at other times of 
the year the climate is not especially liked by the 
Spaniard himself, who, if he can, seeks other coun- 
tries or watering places. At the time of the visit of 
which I write, late fall, the weather in the northern 
provinces was on some days quite cool; in the south, 
that is, in Seville and the lower Mediterranean towns, 
it was most mild and springlike. Even then there 
were days when one did not regret a warm coat, for 
at times the air becomes damp and chilly and the 
cold penetrating. Particularly when visiting the old 
buildings, a warm wrap or coat should be carried 
no matter if the day outside is mild. 

A courier of the best sort is always desirable and 
in some places, like Toledo and Cordova and old 
Granada, is absolutely necessary, especially on the 
first visit to the country. To make the trip most 
enjoyable and profitable it would be well to engage 
a reputable man for the entire tour rather than to 
depend upon the local guides. Our courier, who ac- 
companied us while we were in Spanish territory, is 
a native of Gibraltar. He exhibited a most intimate 
knowledge of all the places we visited, and of all things 
Spanish of which we inquired. Indeed, Senor Michael 
Benunes is known to many Americans and is most 
cheerfully recommended to anyone fortunate enough 
to secure his services. Where dependence is had upon 



Suggestions for Travellers 15 

local guides, only those who are recommended at the 
best hotels should be engaged. 

Spanish money is based upon the decimal system. 
The peseta, the unit of all value in reckoning, is 
equal in value to about eighteen cents, or a little less 
than a franc, and is divided into one hundred centimos. 
Its persuasive and propitiatory power is, however, a 
constant source of wonder and will win anywhere 
most grateful gracias. A most useful bit is the fifty- 
centimos piece, equivalent to about ten cents, which 
will reward any ordinary service, while even the copper 
ten-centimos pieces are never " refused." 

Like the other Latin country, counterfeit money is 
frequently in evidence in Spain, and is most often en- 
countered in scrip and in the five-peseta piece, which 
latter is of the size of our silver dollar. It is no idle 
suggestion that you ring your change before accept- 
ing it. At all the principal railway stations on the 
frontier, there are regularly kept up offices for the 
exchange of money, but here the full rate of exchange 
is not always allowed, while one should know his cur- 
rency thoroughly and should allow no false pride to 
prevent its immediate examination for character and 
amount. 

As to scrip, which is in denominations of twenty- 
five, fifty, one hundred, five hundred and one thousand 
pesetas, no notes should be accepted that are not is- 
sued by the Bank of Spain, and even then they should 
be obtained preferably from a banking house or a 
well-known agency. As a matter of fact, Spain is 



16 Suggestions for Travellers 

now fairly well covered by branches of the Credit 
Lyonnais, of Paris, the American Express Company 
and of Cook's, whose employees are most courteous 
and obliging and who often extend accommodation 
that we would hardly expect to receive in our own 
country. 

In the cities, the best hotels, having a range of 
prices similar to all first-class European hotels, can 
possibly be avoided and well-recommended pensions 
sought out. Second-rate hotels should not be at- 
tempted. 

Everywhere throughout Spain, the cafe habit is 
popular, and can be practised with surprising economy, 
besides affording a welcome variation from hotel fare. 
In the hotels the table d'hote meal is the usual thing. 
For breakfast, invariably taken in your rooms, you 
soon become satisfied with merely coffee, rolls and 
fresh butter, to which English marmalade adds a de- 
sirable flavor. Lunch is a modest affair — your consti- 
tution must be sound and your appetite a hearty one 
if you long for mealtime here — but at dinner you have 
many things from which to choose, and abundance of 
time for your coffee and cigar before seeking evening 
distraction at opera, theatre or promenade. Ordi- 
nary water is to be avoided, while the native wine 
should be drunk sparingly. Bottled mineral water 
can always be obtained, of which we preferred the 
water d'Evienne, common to Paris cafes. 

A smoker should take with him all of his favorite 
brands that the customs will allow and depend not 
at all on the native cigar. The Spanish cigar is im- 



Suggestions for Travellers 17 

possible and one cannot remain long enough in the 
country to become accustomed to it. If sweets are a 
necessity one should not rely too much upon the na- 
tive product, for while there are some chocolate fac- 
tories whose cakes are passable, the ordinary confec- 
tions are not for our taste, although of wonderful 
delight to the little Sefioritas. 

Tipping, even in the slightest measure, is a cus-» 
tomary part of all payments for service, but, unlike 
in our own country, at the hotels it can be deferred 
until one's departure, when all servants who have con- 
tributed in any way to your comfort come in for 
their regular pourboire. A solicitation of alms is one 
of the daily experiences, even in the museums, and 
while a compliance is altogether a matter of personal 
decision, a judicious gift of a few coins will often 
save annoyance. One soon finds that a reputation 
for dispensing charity is quickly acquired in places 
where you are a frequent visitor, and you often find 
the same beggars waiting for you on your return to 
your hotel. The most annoying feature about the 
begging is the crowd of little rascals who gather about 
your vehicle or press about you when you walk. They 
can, however, be easily scattered by a gruff " anda" 
or by a handful of coins thrown at a distance, when 
their scrambling is most amusing. 

The opportunities for pleasure, as we view it, are 
not many in Spain. There is always the drive for 
the pleasant afternoons, when fashion vies with beauty 
and society goes forth to be seen. For the poorer 
classes there are the cheaper theatres and the music- 



18 Suggestions for Travellers 

halls with their native gypsy dancers, the latter being 
an especial feature of the south. The frequenter of 
these places makes no pretence of his appearance, but 
unshaven and unshorn he crowds around the tables 
and dissipates, to your surprise, in a single cup of 
coffee and his inevitable cigarette, and maybe, now 
and then, in some local beverage. 

For the better grades of society there are the thea- 
tres for dramas and the operas, and in the principal 
cities the clubs where the men of wealth and position 
spend most of their nights in gaming. 

For all classes there is, in every town or city, the 
inevitable bull-ring, the mecca for pleasant Sunday 
afternoons. 

The language is easily acquired, at least a suf- 
ficient vocabulary for all ordinary requirements, and 
you will find that even a simple " gracias " will make 
your way pleasanter. At the hotels, in the larger 
cities, English is invariably spoken by some attendant 
at the desk or in the dining-room, but on the trains, 
if you are unaccompanied by one who can act as an 
interpreter, it is essential that you have some knowl- 
edge at least of French. In fact, a study of both 
languages will prove a source not only of pleasure but 
of profit. 



SPAIN OF TO-DAY 



BIARRITZ AND SAN SEBASTIEN 

THROUGH my window shines a golden crescent 
— the first real moon since Adriatic nights. 
If you could but look from the balcony 
where I sit. 
The lights below and near at hand; that moon pal- 
ing the arcs and bringing out the roofs and the trees 
with their shadows of mystery between; the gleaming 
stretch of sand to the point of storm-worn rocks, while 
the constant pounding of the surf sends inward sheets 
of glistening foam and makes familiar music to the 
ear. 

The soft night comes through my window on the 
light October breeze. All sounds are distant and sub- 
dued to the monotone of the breaking waves. 

Beautiful Biarritz. A night of dreams. Ah, well. 

Early last evening Mr. T and I left Paris on 

the " Repeat," the train which follows the " Sud Ex- 
press " some hours later. This morning at " ha'f pass 
two, free, four," the guard, who is also conductor and 
cook, brought us coffee and rolls and wakened us to 
the fair stretches of Southern France. 

Presently we arrived at the station which is two 
miles or so from the sea now, although the spur that 
is building will land passengers right at the beach. 

21 



22 Spain of To-Day 

Loitering to practice my stumbling French upon the 
obliging guard, the rest got ahead and took much 
amusement as I came whistling through the barrier 
followed by the cries of the drivers. One was so in- 
sistent that I turned upon him in vexation to discover 
an apologetic official who, cap in hand, respectfully 
begged my " billet," 

A drive of fifteen minutes took us by pretty country 
villas and pretentious mansions, passing en route don- 
key-powered milk carts to whose drivers — feminine and 
plain — one could not resist a " bon-jour." 

Whirling through a gateway and over a gravelled 
approach, we drew up gallantly before this Hotel du 
Palais, built in 1856 for Napoleon III. and the Em- 
press Eugenie, destroyed by fire in 1893 and re- 
erected and enlarged ten years later to the satisfac- 
tion of Edward VII. and other less renowned voy- 
ageurs. 

The dining-room looks to the sea — a clean, airy 
half-moon of a place with big windows on the bow. 
Your appetite grows as you look. An exceedingly well 
chosen room. 

Little Biarritz — of world-wide fame, with its mere 
half-mile crescent of beach guarded by a succession of 
hotels and the casino set in the center "ou on joue au 
bacara." 

Upon our arrival at the hotel we were received by 
our courier, a grey-haired, distingue gentleman in the 

sixties. Mr. T and he are two young men, fresh 

and keen. 

Senor Benunes, El Correo, recommended himself to 



Biarritz and San Sebastien 23 

us in glowing language, promising all the marvellous 
beauties of Spain to unfold while he recounted the 
noted gentlemen he had escorted, — Mark Twain and 
Pabst, the brewer. 

This august person seems to know all tongues, all 
people and all things. 

He has planned, — he plans and we try to do as we 
like, — he has planned a most comprehensive trip 
through the center of Spain, Morocco, French Africa, 
the Mediterranean towns of Spain, and Southern 
France. But we shall see. 

Here at Biarritz almost all is French with some 
Spaniards yet around the cafes and at the casino. A 
few still bathe while the sun is high, watched by the 
bathmen, who are fine-looking fellows, strong and 
tanned. Children and nurses are playing in the 
sand. 

Now, however, the place is practically deserted, for 
the Fall season is well over, although Biarritz is beau- 
tiful under any conditions. But you know the pleas- 
ant thoughts induced by a deserted seaside resort 
and this is nothing else. There is no business except 
to cater to visitors and incidently to relieve them in 
the most expeditious way of any encumbering wealth. 

To-day — two delightful drives in the surrounding 
country, and at the Hotel, some delicious, fresh little 
sole — incidents worthy of the chronicling. 

Last evening, after dinner in the beautiful but de- 
serted dining-room, we went to the casino and watched 
the gaming for an hour or so. 



24» Spain of To-Day 

There may be a fascination in the play itself under 
other circumstances, but not among that crowd with 
their drawn, worn faces, playing for their little stakes' 
as if for an heritage; the remnants of the Season's 
throng — scavengers after the pack has gone. 

Once in a while a big wolf yet comes. Young R , 

night before last, was said to have won twenty thou- 
sand francs and yesterday to have lost that and ten 
thousand more. But they tell such stories you cannot 
be sure. 

The cool morning, well advanced, found us en route 
for San Sebastien in a fifty " C. G. V." I am sorry 
that I exhausted my adjectives and threatened your 
patience upon Biarritz, for the Spanish country and 
town are the more beautiful. 

San Sebastien is the capital of the fertile Basque 
Provinces, independent since the Visigoths and having 
to-day their own soldiery and control of their affairs. 

The people are workers. From daybreak to dark 
they till their lands and make more snug the little 
stone houses whose curling smoke invites them from 
their toil to noonday repast or evening meal. 

They are close to thrifty France — so near that the 
peoples seem of the same race and customs. Were it 
not for the guards at the border line, or the word of 
the passerby spoken in another tongue, you would not 
readily distinguish the difference. 

At a word from the courier, we diverted from the 
main road and whirled up the quiet streets of the little 
old town of Fuentehabia with its church built before 
Isobella, the Catholic, sent Columbus on his discoveries. 



Biarritz and San Sebastien 25 

This is probably all so familiar to you through your 
travels elsewhere on the continent, but to me it had the 
charm of first acquaintance, and the age-colored walls, 
the narrow, paved streets, the stone houses whose musty 
odors you cannot escape, workmen and women in their 
strange garbs, — all made for an interest impossible 
to obtain through another's eyes and pen. 

A look at the crumbling castles and fortifications, 
a fight through the horde of pernicious little beggars 
where the efficacy of " anda " first proved itself, and 
we were off again. 

Wonderful hills and valleys of arable land! 

Women with huge baskets on their heads, chatting 
and even knitting as they walked along; women on 
little donkeys well-nigh lost beneath the skirts and 
baskets ; women in the fields working with the men ; 
soldiers in the vivid uniform of the country, loitering 
lazily by the roadside or at attention before the guard 
houses, all added life to the panorama of cultivated 
land. 

Sapristi! What motor roads. I have never seen 
their like. 

Ever and anon by the side of a road which we Amer- 
icans would pronounce perfect, appeared piles of stone 
of cobble size for further improvement. A little be- 
yond we would find the cobbles crushed for macadam 
filling and presently would appear the " crusher," a 
stalwart peasant steadily swinging his heavy hammer 
and working out his taxes to the glory of his country 
and the delight of automobilists. 

Well across the frontier we stopped at El Passage, 



26 Spain of To-Day 

a town built on both sides of a little harbor whence 
one gains the sea through a narrow, winding chan- 
nel between precipitous cliffs. 

Here our courier, whose motto is "the quaint or 
nothing," — did Mark Twain teach him that word? — 
engaged a " girl " to row us to the entrance, for the 
women did the work here in the ancient days, and it 
was a custom not unpopular with the stronger sex. 

This, however, was too much for us, and despite the 
protestations of the disgusted Correo we insisted at 
least in stroking that lubberly old craft while the 
" girl " maintained a very strong bow oar. 

The channel winds tortuously seaward. As we pulled 
leisurely by, to the right, on the bare, rough rocks, a 
crowd scurried at the sound of a whistle, and after 
much delay a blast shot its white cloud viciously up- 
ward and scattered fragments of stone into the water, 
sending up showers of foam. 

To the left, across channel, a little crucifix marks the 
spot where an English steamer half way to her goal of 
safety struck the jutting ledges and was wrecked with 
a loss of eighteen. The bare rocks gave no possibility 
of assistance to the watchers on the hill, but now steps 
lead from the water's edge and are lost behind an up- 
per ledge. 

Further out, at the very entrance, the cliffs rise to 
their greatest height, rough and repelling. At the 
summit are the lighthouse buildings, square, white and 
of great prominence. Across channel are little shelter 
houses for the coast guard. 

As we gained the open sea, a steamer's smoke 



Biarritz and San Sebastien 27 

smirched the far horizon. The Bay of Biscay was tran- 
quil. Only the long rollers lifted our heavy craft as 
we swung about, suggesting the mighty strength that 
now lay slumbering. 

Landing, we retraced our steps to the motor and 
were presently rolling down the quiet streets of San 
Sebastien. 

What an atmosphere of ease and indolence greets 
you even here on the very threshold of Spain! 
There is no hurly-burly bustle. Everyone loiters by 
the cafes, saunters along the seashore or rolls by in 
comfortable carriages. The whole place suggests 
plenty of time in which to do — nothing. 

The hill behind the town affords a wonderful pano- 
rama of this nature's fairyland. The frowning forti- 
fications on the rock which guards the right entrance 
lend a tone of severity that is belied by the little bay 
smiling under the warm Autumn sun and the richly 
foliaged hills which well-nigh embrace it. 

Alfonso's Summer Palace on the sloping landscape 
looking toward the water occupies no more prominent 
place than many another mansion, yet stamps the seal 
of royal approval upon the gayety of San Sebastien. 

On the beach close to the water's edge is a building, 
beautiful in design and well worthy of a better pur- 
pose than to encourage the vice of gambling that is the 
heritage of this excitable, courageous, indolent race. 
This is the casino with its lavishly decorated rooms. 

With the afternoon sun streaming in and the soft 
sea breeze blowing through the rooms, the strained 
faces of the players in tense groups around the tables 



28 Spain of To-Day 

formed a picture even more repelling than that of the 
night before. 

Some were women garbed in black who seemed to be 
staking their very chances of livelihood. Nearly all 
were eager, tense and silent. 

A few appeared to regard the play as a matter of 
everyday business. A man, whose appearance sug- 
gested one of our own respectable bankers, keeping 
careful watch of the clock, at the hour of appointment 
nonchalantly gathered in his balance of many thou- 
sand francs and coolly went his way. 

On our return as we whirled through San Jean de 
Luz, on the French border, an acquaintance from some 
part of the world, left his seat at the roadside cafe and 
frantically waved to us, but we were going too fast to 
tarry and we could not make him out. 

En route for Madrid to-night, courier, Albert, bags 
and all and the " Sud Express " leaves at ten-fifteen. 

I wonder if you recall that funny little man, Dris- 
coll, who used to skip so energetically about the decks 
of the Adriatic, attending to every feminine-body's 
wants until mal de mer had disappeared and permit- 
ted the appearance of his wife and charming daughter. 

They reminded one so much of Gibson's family of 
Pipp. 

Then there were the middle-aged Englishman who 
never would take a hint, and the young American with 
the bulldogs, and the Aunt clinging desperately to just 
under thirty. 




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Biarritz and San Sebastien 29 

Perhaps you remember how this party — sans bull- 
dogs — cliqued. 

We all looked for a steamer romance, albeit the days 
after the mal de mer were short and the Englishman 
perniciously present. 

Why do I mention them? Well, Pipp is being 
educated. 

As we came down for dinner we met Pipp — I mean 
Driscoll — in the hotel lobby. 

We shook hands cordially, as all good steamer ac- 
quaintances do, and expressed mutual surprise at each 
other's presence there. 

He was just explaining that his family had decided 
to do a bit of Spain, when Mrs. D. appeared with her 
daughter. 

Wonders of the Nile! Close in their train came the 
Englishman. 

We looked around expectantly. 

Yes, the Aunt was tripping daintily down the stairs 
— as Eugenie was wont to do — with her attendant 
nephew. Here then was our friend of San Jean de Luz. 

Someone facetiously asked, " And what is the mat- 
ter with the dogs ? " but they, poor things, were 
quarantined in distant Southampton. 

"And isn't it jolly our friends were coming this 
way too ? " rippled the Aunt. Really she is quite in- 
teresting. 

Poor Pi — , I mean Driscoll, looked longingly at the 
door that led barwise, but meekly followed the rest in. 

We left them all gayly chatting. 



30 



Spain of To-Day 



Hale, the Englishman, was thrilling Miss Pris- 
cilla with some tales of manly endeavor while young 
America devoted himself sedulously to her Mamma. 

There must be method in the youth's madness, or 
is he but casually interested? 



*&& 




MADRID 

IT is so strange to be whisked in a night into a 
country where even French gives a homelike 
suggestion and the chattering jabber has neither 
rhyme nor reason. 

When we went back to the Wagon-Restaurant for 
our cafe complet this morning we had come well into 
the heart of the Spanish country. 

Land of all my castles! What a disappointment. 
Surely the Pyrenees nor San Sebastien had prepared 
us for anything like this, nor our fancies of the country 
of the Dons. 

The misty grandeur of Spain has tinged every Amer- 
ican boy's dreams with the touch of adventure, 
chivalry, wealth and pride. 

In more serious thought one has regarded with re- 
spect the country which brought our land to the 
cognizance of the older world, peopled our earlier set- 
tlements and lent its tongue to all that is south of us. 

Surely there must remain some virility of the older 
days ; their strength — though broken with the scatter- 
ing Armada — cannot have faded utterly; the evi- 
dences of a once powerful nation must yet be shown 
in the activity of its industries and the thrift of its 
people. 

31 



32 Spain of To-Day 

But the first glimpse into the wasted core of this 
vast land reads you a lesson of impoverishment, of a 
heartless, hopeless struggle under the burden of ac- 
cumulated wealth and power. After compact, sturdy 
England, after thrifty, prosperous France, with their 
busy, independent peoples, this country by immediate 
comparison seems all the more unattractive. 

On both sides to the horizon, everywhere, bare as 
your hand, stretch arid plains with rarely a vestige 
of trees or grass for miles at a time. A country burned 
brown and now all the more desolate as the crops had 
been gathered. As we whirled along a habitation on 
the landscape was an occasion, and when any number 
appeared they came as a surprise. 

Imagine toy houses and churches surrounded by a 
wall set in the middle of a field of brown and you can 
picture how the towns appeared to us as we came upon 
them. We would travel miles through level fields of 
plowed land or vineyards when suddenly, without warn- 
ing, one of these would discover itself. There were no 
suburbs to suggest its advent, no roads to lead one ex- 
pectantly on. Some were little more than hamlets with 
the inevitable church in the center, and once when we 
saw no houses a church appeared the only edifice on 
the landscape. 

Once we passed a forest of fir balsams — each tree 
tapped and bearing the cup to catch the flowing sap. 
Later, for a short space, we ran through a growth of 
olive trees dotting hillside and valley and freshening 
the landscape with their bright color. 

Much of the land, — dry as it is, — is under cultiva- 



Madrid 33 

tion clear to the Guadarrama Range, but it is one vast 
stretch unrelieved by the boundary marks of ownership. 

You look in vain for the fenced-off farms, the pros- 
perous individual homesteads that your mind indelibly 
associates with country land. 

No. Here the peasants work for others and their 
two pesetas a day. Their home at nightfall is yonder 
in some squalid corner of that aged town. 

What hope have they whether crops are good or bad, 
whether they work long and hard or only as they are 
driven. 

Ugh! What a country. 

On the right appeared Avila, city of ancient Spain, 
girded by a wall with eighty-three towers and having 
only four entrances still guarded by the stone beasts 
put there centuries ago to scare an enemy away. 

Later we passed El Escorial, a cathedral said to be 
one of the wonders of the world. This is in the heart 
of the bare and desolate Guadarrama Mountains. 

Take it all in all such a dried up, worthless and bar- 
ren land you never saw. Save for the stretches of olive 
trees and of pine, the whole country south of the Pyre- 
nees seems nothing but an arid waste. 

Out of all this we came abruptly to Madrid. 

There were no flowing, navigable streams to suggest 
a city's proximity — only the meagre Manzanares — nor 
other apparent reason for the capital's location — 
merely a King's fancy centuries ago. 

Facing you, as you leave the modern station, is the 
Royal Palace, monument to the poor people's bur- 
den. Across the way are the barracks for ten thou- 



34 Spain of To-Day 

sand soldiers. Between, winds a broad avenue with its 
modern trolley tracks. 

The narrowing streets leading through the main 
part of the city disclose ordinary buildings, rarely over 
five stories in height. 

In the heart of the city is the Puerto del Sol, 
through which pulses the traffic of business and pleas- 
ure, and at one end of this we found our hostelry — 
Hotel de Paris. 

I fear that Benunes has a bit of the national strain 
of vanity. This afternoon he had a most " doggy " 
rig waiting at the hotel door, with its gallant driver 
and footman and span of smart horses. 

Madrid is a place in which to drive. No one walks 
unless he be alien or poor. 

The fashionable promenades and the beautiful pub- 
lic park are most attractive. The library building, the 
art gallery, the building of the Bank of Spain, give 
promise of something worth while. We saw also many 
beautiful private residences of the nobility — veritable 
palaces in size and outward appearance. 

But our feeling to-night is one of keenest disap- 
pointment. Our hopes were so high of something 
grand and rich and beautiful, the common conception, 
I believe, of Spain, that this little city of half a mil- 
lion, the country's capital, suggesting so little of en- 
terprise and usefulness, is certainly discouraging. 

It is true that the streets are thronged, but the peo- 
ple appear poor and worn. The crowd is augmented 
by the peasants advantaging themselves of a Saturday 
night in town, until the Puerto del Sol seems the busiest 



Madrid 35 

square in the world, but the contrast is thereby all the 
more strong. 

One looks to see a hopeful, prosperous people in such 
a throng, ever coming and going through this main 
artery of Spain, but you scan the faces in vain for that 
strong, proud, virile type you hoped to see. 

Spain is in a period of transition, so it is said. But 
actually it seems more a drawing apart of the two 
great classes — the wealthy and the workers ; modern- 
ity for the former and degeneration for the latter. 

Think of oxcarts rubbing hubs with automobiles ; 
ancient mule teams with fine modern equipages ; goats 
feeding next door to up-to-date buildings, and you 
have it. 

It is of course an error to take a strange country 
too seriously on first acquaintance. You must coquette 
with it ; pass the compliments of the day ; laugh at its 
oddities and enjoy the smile in return. By and by the 
unaccustomed tones cease to jar, the grotesque turns 
to pathos and the eccentricities become fixed in your 
mind to be treasured fondly at another day when time 
shall have smoothed the rough contact of intimate as- 
sociation. 

We are now assuredly in the land of the onion. 

We might almost cry with the Ancient Mariner : 

" Garlic, garlic everywhere 
Except in what you drink." 

The very atmosphere seems steeped with it. It is 
ever oppressively present. 



36 Spain of To-Day 

No self-respecting hen could become so imbued with 
the essence of the herb unless grown up with it from 
early childhood, and the vegetables — the flavor is more 
than a souppon, it is an Englishman's hint. 

You know there are no music halls here, but instead, 
one-hour so-called performances are given in the differ-r 
ent places of amusement whose audiences are changed 
in the same houses frequently three or four times an 
evening. I doubt if even a Madrid audience could 
6tand a whole evening in any one. 

After coffee we incautiously ventured to two; the 
first to see what manner of performance was given, — 
the second to try and forget the first. 

At the former, off the Calle Arenal, a dog stand- 
ing unprotested in the aisle, thrust his cold muzzle 
into my hand. The second house was more pretentious, 
but hardly more interesting. 

The beautiful Seiioritas, we did not see, — not one. 

Well, I hope that we shall find it all more interest- 
ing on longer acquaintance. But if you really wish 
to appreciate the great and glorious country of the 
Stars and Stripes, come to Spain. 

I do believe the only reason that this country is not 
depopulated, to the consequent disadvantage of our 
own, is because of lack of transportation or of knowl- 
edge. 

Our rooms look out upon the Puerto del Sol and 
from our balconies we watch the passing throng. 

The street at the end there, Calle Arenal, the mid- 
dle one right across the length of the Square, followed 



Madrid 37 

a little way down takes you to the spot where they 
shot at the Italian Amadeus. As a pleasant way of 
frightening him, they killed his horses and crowded 
around his carriage as if to assassinate him. He was 
not, however, so easily to be scared from his throne. 
Standing upright, he courageously faced them, and 
throwing open his coat dared them to shoot. 

His advice was not followed, but never succeeding 
in winning the affection of his volatile subjects he 
shortly withdrew from the country. 

At the further end of Calle Mayor, the street im- 
mediately to the left, the bomb was thrown at Alfonso 
XIII. as he and Victoria returned from their wedding 
ceremony at old San Jeronimo. 

We attended two services this morning; the first at 
San Francisco El Grande, the most important and 
practically the only church of prominence in Madrid 
where there are no cathedrals. 

The main part of this church is in the form of a 
huge dome with another dome at the top, and is beau- 
tifully but rather over-decorated. In the older part, 
which is now the Sacristy, there is wood carving of 
the fifteenth century and even of the thirteenth cen- 
tury. 

Proceeding through the older section of Madrid we 
drove to the Royal Palace where the guard mount is 
reviewed every morning. 

As we came to the palace entrance, at just the right 
time, Queen Victoria walked modestly out, attended 
simply by a companion. She looked like a light-haired, 
well but plainly dressed American girl, — which is a 



38 Spain of To-Day 

compliment, you know. Followed at a distance by 
a carriage and her footmen she turned to the left and 
entered the royal gardens. 

Passing through the entrance, from which she had 
just emerged, we entered the court within as the royal 
guard filed out preceded by one of the best military 
bands I have ever heard. 

The guard mount — albeit tedious — is quite interest- 
ing. 

The old guard and the relief draw up at opposite 
sides of the spacious Parade. The bands of each play 
alternately for an unconscionable time, when at bugle 
signals the simple movements of the parade are 
accomplished. 

The old guard files out at a snail's pace, the soldiers 
executing steps like dancing masters as they poise one 
foot after the other extended at just the proper 
angle. 

The officers are smart in appearance, but, with the 
exception of the Royal Guard of Honor, the soldiers 
are a sorry-looking lot, undersized and poorly matched, 
while their marching is execrable. 

The comparison with the snappy, erect French in- 
fantry is marked. 

Returning to the Palace proper we went up into one 
of the galleries and were in time to witness high mass 
in the royal chapel. Much form attended this service, 
as is undoubtedly customary. 

Retracing our steps through Calle Mayor we 
stopped for a moment at the place where the bombs 
were thrown. Here they have erected a monument, not 



Madrid 39 

yet unveiled, to the soldiers killed while guarding the 
royal carriage. 

The missiles were launched from an upper story of 
an ordinary dwelling-house. The first, poorly aimed, 
struck the balcony below, killing an entire family of 
the nobility who were watching the procession, while 
the second exploded at the wheel of Alfonso's carriage 
as it moved along. 

It is said thirty-one were destroyed, but that in all 
the excitement Alfonso displayed great courage, call- 
ing to the people not to be afraid, while poor Victoria 
was in tears. 

The assassin temporarily escaped, but afterwards, 
cornered by a keeper, shot him and committed suicide. 

A wonderful man is Senor Benunes. Last evening 
and this morning, regardless of the season, he was 
dressed in a gorgeous raiment of white flannel. He re- 
lieves us from the embarrassment of being gazed at as 
foreigners, for from his wide sombrero to his long yel- 
low shoes, he is a magnet for all eyes. 

Taller by a head than most Spaniards, he should be 
sufficiently noticeable without the attraction of his 
dress ; which is irresistible to old and young. 

He tells us that the war with the United States was 
an unpopular proceeding among the common people 
of Spain, and that their temporary hatred of the 
Americans was soon forgotten, if ever held seriously. 

It is said also in Spain that our presentation of the 
$20,000,000 for the Philippines was doubly welcome as 
a gift and as a relief of an undesirable burden. 



40 Spain of To-Day 

I regret that I did not complete this letter before 
lunch while I was still in a contented frame of mind. 
" Est a V content of " and you answer invariably, " Si, 
contentissimo." 

It is a Sunday in Spain and no doubt the inevitable 
suggests itself to you. 

Yes, we have been to a bull-fight. 

Any sympathy that we may have had for the de- 
cadent Spaniard is gone after that spectacle. It was 
simply fierce. 

Next to me sat a priest. They say on the day of an 
important fight, services are hurried through with. 
Beyond him were an English lady and her husband. 
Curiosity undoubtedly brought her as it did us. 

Imagine a sand-strewn ring perhaps seventy yards 
across, surrounded by a five-foot board fence ; out- 
side of that an eight-foot walk, with shields every now 
and then behind which the men can dodge when the 
bull has leaped the first barrier; then a higher wall of 
stone topped by an iron railing. Above that rises an 
amphitheatre of stone seats, ten rows ; then, higher 
still, tiers of wooden seats and boxes, — all capable of 
holding fourteen thousand people. 

Our seats were directly beneath the royal box and 
judges' stand. Opposite was the entrance for the 
bulls, and to the left of that, the entrance for the 
fighters. 

A bugle sounded and from the gateway below came 
two riders, richly dressed and with their mounts gaily 
caparisoned. They cantered across the ring, made 
a hasty inspection of the preparations, when one re- 



Madrid 41 

turned to the judges' stand and, saluting with hat in 
hand, endeavored to catch the key which was tossed to 
him. A prize of twenty-five pesetas quickened his zeal, 
but neither prize nor honor was his lot. 

Still he was the starter of the performance, as he 
showed by recrossing the ring and unlocking the door 
through which the bulls were to come, scampering out 
of the way at a great rate. 

Again the bugle sounded, the door to the left was 
thrown open and in marched a procession, in gallant 
rows of threes, of matadors, banderilleros, plcadores — 
lancers on horseback — monkeys (not really the ani- 
mals but men in red jackets without any weapons of 
defence who require the agility of monkeys to get 
out of harm's way), and finally teams of mules to haul 
out the dead bulls and horses. 

Saluting the judges, the gaily dressed line broke up, 
the mules were driven out, the matadors stood non- 
chalantly to one side and the play was ready to begin. 

As your pulses quickened, in spite of yourself, a 
third bugle rang out, the other door was thrown open, 
and in rushed a wild-looking bull with a fluttering 
banderilla waving defiantly from his shoulder. 

First the men on foot with their red cloaks induced 
him to futile rushes, stepping nimbly one side as he 
was just upon them, and flicking their cloaks over his 
eyes. After tiring him in this fashion until he became 
less dangerous, the banderilleros advanced and with 
great dexterity implanted the barbed weapons in his 
shoulders as he lowered his head in the rush. 

Enraged, baffled and wounded, he looked around 



42 Spain of To-Day 

hopelessly, bellowing his anger, and pawing the earth 
as his evasive tormentors escaped him. 

Soon a poor, old, broken-down ruin of a horse was 
pushed and beaten until he was directly in the line of 
the bull's advance, with a bandaged eye towards the 
foe. Seeing at last something before him that could 
not escape, the bull charged madly. The victim reeled 
before the sickening shock while the sharp horns 
ripped and tore, crimsoning the sand. 

Two horses only were sacrificed to whet the passion 
of the yelling crowd, and these were " merely " 
wounded, when the bugle sounded their withdrawal to 
be patched up with excelsior and sewing if necessary, 
and reserved for later slaughter. 

More banderillas and then the matador, in gorgeous 
gold and lace, selected his espada and approached the 
judges' stand. 

Cap in hand, in pathetic imitation of the gladiators' 
salute to Caesar, he awkwardly addressed the President 
of the affair: " Baja; Por Su Sefioria y Familia y Por 
el Publico de Madrid" and sword in one hand, his 
bright scarlet cape in the other, he approached the 
now weakened and panting bull. 

At first concealing the weapon beneath his cloak he 
baited him this way and that, and after much prepara- 
tion made the thrust, the blade sinking two-thirds its 
length in the broad shoulder, but not a fatal stroke. 

Immediately the red flags were waved, first on this 
side, then on that, with sickening purpose, but another 
and yet another stroke was needed before the mules 
dragged him from the ring. 



Madrid 43 

I could tell you many more disgusting details at- 
tending this national sport, — the Spaniard's chief ex- 
istence, — details of peculiar cruelty which from the 
tellers we knew must be true, but I have only recounted 
what we saw, and I am sure it will be enough for you 
as it was for us, for we left as another animal came 
charging in close on the heels of the first victim. 

As we walked out we could not resist the remark 
for any to hear who wished, that after such a spectacle 
we were not sorry for Manila and Santiago. 

We returned to the hotel after a walk through El 
Retiro — that section of the public park where carriages 
are not allowed — where children are taken to play and 
a favorite resort for all ages. 

On one bank of the little lake or pond, in the cen- 
ter of El Retiro, preparations are being made for the 
erection of a gigantic statue of Alfonso XII. 

There is little or no sculpture in Madrid. The few 
statues, and the broad streets and avenues afford ex- 
cuse for many, are as a rule worse than mediocre. 

One of the best, of Isabella Catolica, founder of most 
of Spain's cathedrals, is in the Paseo de la Castellana — 
another favorite drive of the nobility. 

Such a strange jumble of modern and ancient ve- 
hicles. It is a peculiar sight to see a huge, lumbering, 
two-wheeled cart with a big mule in the shafts, the 
next one in front of him a shade smaller, and so on, 
until the leader at the head of three, four or even five 
in tandem, is a little donkey who goes seriously on his 
way, ears flapping, knowing exactly what the driver 



44* Spain of To-Day 

means when he calls from the cart and schooled by the 
stick to obey. 

Everywhere is a moving crowd, for the most part in 
the working clothes of the peasant and of the lowest 
type; a degenerated people. Beggars are on all sides. 

With the exception of the fashionable quarter and 
the Palace, in its outward appearance Madrid in no- 
wise resembles Paris, to which some imaginative people 
compare it. 

We are come to believe the stories of the beauty, 
wealth and grandeur of this country are founded 
purely on that same imagination. 

Confound that bull-fight! 



TOLEDO 



THE peasants around here have a saying : " See 
Madrid, then go to the sky." We think to- 
night we know the reason therefor. 
We have been to Toledo. 

We had thought that Madrid was dirty, ill-smelling 
and slovenly. By comparison it is the acme of beauty, 
cleanliness and modernity. 

Shortly after leaving Madrid this morning, we 
passed a church on a hill which Philip II. erected to 
mark the geographical center of Spain. Here he 
would have had the capital, but the ground was un- 
suitable. Ergo, Madrid. 

After a two hours' run, — made short by Mr. T 

and Benunes recounting their experiences among the 
Pyramids and in the Ear East, — we came to the little 
station of Toledo and found a cochero to take us to 
the city. 

Crowning the first hill to our left, as we followed the 
winding road, are the ruins of the thousand year old 
Castillo de San Servando, yet frowning at the city be- 
yond the canon of the yellow Tagus. 

At the foot of this hill by the roadside is a spring. 
Although modern ways have suggested a pipe for an 
outlet, still in the ancient way women and girls were 
filling their stone jugs and carrying them on hip across 
the bridge and up the steep ascent to the town. 

45 



46 Spain of To-Day 

Turning sharply to the right, we passed through the 
first towered entrance to the bridge over the muddy 
Tagus which encircles the hill of Toledo like a Moorish 
cimitar. 

Toledo, you know, is built on the crest of a wall- 
girt hill which slopes sharply on all sides, dipping for 
half its circumference to the Tagus and for the rest 
to a flat country beyond. 

The old walls are still in shape, while the ancient 
gates, although renovated here and there, present their 
former appearance and carry out their early useful- 
ness. 

Crossing the Puente del Alcantara and through the 
second tower emblazoned with the arms of Charles V., 
we skirted the walls past the old Roman gate — Puerto 
del Sol — and emerged through another double-towered 
gateway to the country without. 

Following the lower walls to the left, we passed the 
ruins of a Roman amphitheatre in the fields below and 
climbing the hill entered the city by another gate- 
way. 

As we halted in front of the Church of St. John of 
the Kings, on whose outer walls still hang the chains 
of the Christian martyrs, we had a good view of the 
winding Tagus below, dotted with the old water mills 
of the Moors. Beyond stretches the country — hilly on 
this side — rough, barren and uninviting. 

In the cloister within the church, or convent, is the 
most beautiful carving imaginable, much of which was 
ruthlessly broken in the French occupation. 

At a little distance stands the synagogue of Santa 








*T-<i<-*^t^. :*?> 




PUERTA DEL SoL. THE Old RoMAX GATE IN TOLEDO 



Toledo 47 

Maria del Blanca, massively built for the size of the 
edifice. Directly across the way we found an armorer's 
shop of the ancient time. 

Here are forged by hand the real Toledo blades of 
centuries' reputation, with the wonderfully tempered 
steel and the costly gold inlaid mountings. 

One of these daggers which I now have can drive 
through a copper piece with ordinary effort and with- 
out damage to the blade. 

We saw also a dress sword bent up like a watch- 
spring, while even the heavy cavalry sabres were sur- 
prisingly flexible. 

Depositing two hundred and sixty pesetas for value 
received, we proceeded to the Sinagoga del Transito, 
erected, before his race was expelled from the Spanish 
country, by Samuel Levy, the rich Jewish treasurer of 
Peter the Cruel. 

In this little temple of worship the work of restora- 
tion is showing wonderful carving through the plaster 
with which the Spaniards attempted to hide all sugges- 
tions of another people and another religion. 

Coming into the country from the North, Toledo 
gives practically the first glimpse of Ancient Spain. 
Beside it Madrid seems modern. 

Here the city is characteristically Moorish. 

The houses are low and roofed with tiles. The blank 
walls are only occasionally relieved by little square 
windows and by grilled doorways opening directly into 
the center of the dwellings. 

The narrow streets are paved with cobbles and are 
quickly lost in unexpected squares or intersecting al- 



48 Spain of To-Day 

leys. They are as aimless as the wanderings of the 
native goats on the near-by hills. 

It is a mystery how even the oldest inhabitant finds 
his objective point, but, nevertheless, our cochero 
whipped up his horses with a fair show of confidence, 
and at a word from the Senor, turned this way and that 
until he finally stopped before a doorway having little 
peculiarity from its fellows. 

We ascended a few steps and entered the audience 
hall of a Moorish palace, with tiled floor and walls and 
having a ceiling richly carved. 

This appears to be the only room among the dwell- 
ings of Toledo of truly Moorish origin, that has re- 
tained its former appearance. 

The rest of the palace is lost in the odd buildings 
of Spanish occupancy. 

Languid, unimaginative, the Spaniard lays a stone 
where he finds another in place and adds a wall where 
three are standing, even though his completed house is 
rough and inconvenient. 

And Toledo is old, — Oh, so old. 

A short drive further took us to a little square and 
the modern Hotel Castilla. 

Toledo was once the capital where was held the court 
of Isobella and Ferdinand in the time when they were 
completing the conquest of Spain from Moorish con- 
trol, and when Columbus was making preparations for 
his discoveries. 

In the height of its prosperity Toledo was a city 
of 200,000 inhabitants, now one-tenth that number. 

The four great epochs in Spain's history have left 



Toledo 49 

their record here in ruin or in suggestion — the Roman, 
the Visigothic, the Moorish and the Catholic Spanish. 
The Romans came before the Christian era, yielding 
after four centuries to the Visigoths, who, in turn, gave 
place to the Moors in the Eighth Century. Several hun- 
dred years later the conquering Spaniards began to 
press the Moslems southward towards the land of their 
birth and at the end of the Fifteenth Century were in 
complete possession. 

The Roman and Moorish works are still in evidence 
in ruined walls, bridges, fortifications and mills, and 
even the city as it stands to-day follows the ancient 
lines. 

Chief of the structures are the Alcazar — the early 
residence of the Cid, Alcaide, later the royal Palace 
and now a military school — the wonderful Cathedral of 
Toledo and the former hospital of Santa Cruz. 

As a tribute almost to the quality of their building, 
although centuries old, the former now shelters an in- 
fant soldiery; the Cathedral is still used as a modern 
place of worship, while the Santa Cruz, with its marvel- 
lous ceilings carved from the mahogany of South Amer- 
ica, is being freed from the devastating plaster of the 
zealots and restored to something of its original ap- 
pearance. 

Fancy a city with its haphazard streets turning, 
twisting, climbing, doubling in all directions ; whose 
houses, built four hundred years and more ago, yet af- 
ford shelter to a slothful people apparently as old, 
ugly and dirty as the city itself; with the foulest of 
odors everywhere, and you have an idea of Toledo. 



50 Spain of To-Day 

One might rave about Toledo, its quaintness and at- 
tractive strangeness, from a distance, but never near 
at hand. 

It has of course its beauty in perspective, the broken 
levels of its tiled roofs interlaced by the labyrinths of 
dark alleys, forming a picture almost unique to itself. 
But its intimate acquaintance is impossible. 

The descendants of the city's builders, for the most 
part ugly as the country, unclean and generously 
marked with disease, seem content to exist as they may 
in the ancient dwellings without thought of change or 
improvement. 

One could not help wondering if Toledo were not 
typical of the Spain of to-day — the slowly fading em- 
bers of a slumbering past. 

After lunch we drove to the summit of the town, 
crowned by the Alcazar, a huge rectangular pile with 
a spacious open court in the center. 

It was in this palace that the Cid — hero of Spain's 
chivalry — held sway and to which later came the courts 
of Isobella, Charles V. and Philip II. 

Driving down the hill we dismissed our lumbering 
carriage and traversing one side of the Place of Four 
Streets, passed through a gateway and came upon the 
house whence Cervantes started the Crazy Knight upon 
his travels. 

They say it is much as it was then — except the small 
bust above the second story and the inscription below 
— and is still used for the same purposes as when 
Cervantes took lodging here. 

In the court forming the lower floor were feeding 



Toledo 51 

mules and their masters, while the carts rested on their 
shafts at one side. We went no further into the build- 
ing, but how that marvellous writer drew his inspira- 
tions from those surroundings the Lord only knows. 
It is not difficult, however, to perceive how the som- 
bre tone of the landscape crept into his narrative. 

A little below and across the street from Cervantes' 
hostelry is the entrance to the ex-hospital of Santa 
Cruz, with its wonderful doorway of black marble and 
finely carved ceilings and balconies. As its name im- 
plies it is built in the form of a cross. At one side 
there is a court surrounded by an open balcony. There 
seems no hurry about the work of restoration — pro- 
ceeding these many years — which promises to repro- 
duce the original form of the structure while effectually 
destroying its suggestion of age. 

These old edifices have their beauty and attractive- 
ness in suggestion rather than in present-day appear- 
ance. The crumbling walls are not beautiful but are 
picturesque and aid the imagination in picturing the 
scenes of ancient days. 

A broken battlement, a war-worn wall, conjures the 
armed host, the pageant of chivalry, the splendor of 
power and wealth. 

The careless plasterer of to-day, laying aside his 
foul cigarette, destroys the ancient effect while squar- 
ing the wall and rounding the turret. 

Rather leave them to crumble with their fading 
memories and build elsewhere. There is room and to 
spare in this God-forsaken country. 

Returning up the few steps to the Plaza del Quatro 



52 Spam of To-Day 

Calles, we followed to the left the principal street of 
the city, Calle del Commercio, which, a bare eighteen 
feet from wall to wall, winds down the hill crooked as 
a ram's horn. 

Turning again to the left we entered the cathedral. 

This immense building, while not the largest, never- 
theless contains in relics and jewels perhaps the great- 
est wealth of any sanctuary in this Spanish country. 

The high vaulting of the aisles and the clear spaces 
give an idea of immensity that is not to be gathered 
from its outward appearance. 

We were admitted into nearly all the rooms and 
finally ended our visit by going through the sacristy, 
which contains portraits of all the Catholic bishops 
from the eighth century down, and leaving the cathe- 
dral by a door opposite from where we first entered. 

The treasures here are in greater profusion and 
more grand than I can readily describe. There was a 
robe with eighty thousand pearls sewed on it; a won- 
derful ivory carving of Christ, and numerous relics, old 
books and precious stones. 

The greatest beauty of the edifice, after the choir 
and the high altar, are the stained glass windows, 
which are marvellous in their wonderful colors retained 
through more than three hundred years. 

Mr. T , who has seen most of the cathedrals 

of Europe and has himself some windows by La Farge 
in his place, at M , confessed that they were be- 
yond anything he had ever seen. 

Returning to the hotel — a cheerless, uncomfortable 
place at best, notwithstanding its reputed cost of sev- 



Toledo 53 

eral million pesetas, a la Benunes — we bestirred our 
cochero into activity and started to retrace our steps 
to the station. 

On our way down the hill we passed herds of goats 
being driven in after a day in the fields. 

Crossing the Tagus and ascending half way to the 
ruined Castillo de San Servando, we had a good view 
of the city, ancient, worn and desolate in the fading 
light, and desolate also the country around it. 

We caught our train by a bare two minutes, es- 
caping narrowly an impossible night in the city, illus- 
trating the necessity of verifying anything that may 
be told you, particularly if it refers to time-tables. 

Coming to the broad, cleaner streets of Madrid with 
its many lights and hurrying crowds, ill-appearing as 
they were, the comparison yet was strong and our ap- 
preciation accordingly. 



SIGHTS IN MADRID 



WE are rapidly falling into the customs of 
the country, be they indolent or other- 
wise. To wit, this morning, as all sensi- 
ble people do, we had in our rooms our 
" cafe con leche, pan y manteca." 

At ten, the hour of its opening, we went to the Art 
Gallery, Museo del Prado, said truthfully to contain 
the greatest collection of masterpieces in the world. 

Our first inspection, preliminary to more leisurely 
study, was made hurriedly ; Benunes locating for us the 
best canvases to which we could more easily return. 

Even then we lingered for an hour or more among 
those wonders of paint and brush. 

This is not to be a dissertation on art, as there are 
few to-day who are not familiar at first hand with 
some wonders of the great masters to be seen elsewhere 
on the continent, or in America, and who do not rec- 
ognize when seen, that depth and richness of color 
which has stood unchanged by the centuries. 

The point about this gallery of the Prado is that it 
contains under one roof the greatest wealth of the 
masters' works ever brought into one collection, and 
besides the masterpieces of Velasquez and Murillo, sons 
of Spain and near-by Portugal, it comprises in profu- 
sion representatives of the Italians, Titian, Raphael 

54, 



Sights in Madrid 55 

and Tintoretto; the Flemish Rubens and Van Dyke; 
again the Spanish Goya and others too numerous to 
mention but which fill to overflowing, with two thou- 
sand canvases, the two stories and corridors of the 
large building. 

There are a few I must tell you of in particular. 

Philip II., vying with his predecessors in their love 
of art, called for Raphael's best work and there was 
sent him what Raphael had termed " Las Perlas " of 
all his canvases. This picture hangs in the first hall 
to the left as you enter the Museo. 

In the same hall but at the further end is the master- 
piece of Murillo, the best of his several " Conceptions." 

Half way down the main corridor, to the left, is a 
separate hall devoted solely to that great master, Vel- 
asquez. Off this hall is a room where one picture alone 
is displayed, " La Meninas," the gem of all his works. 

Still if it were not for this accentuation you might 
linger as long in the outer hall before " Las Lancos," 
surrender of Breda — that speaking canvas of honor- 
able surrender and noble commiseration — and before 
" Las Hilanderas," portraying workers in the lost art 
of tapestry weaving. 

These three of Velasquez, as you know, are spoken 
of as the " non plus ultra" of painting, while several 
others in the Salon de Velasquez lose little in compari- 
son even with these master works. 

In the main corridor are the three famous portraits 
of Titian, including the equestrian portrait of Charles 
V., and such a profusion of Goyas, Rubenses, Tintor- 



56 Spain of To-Day 

ettos, Van Dykes and others of less renown that you 
have difficulty in leaving them until your mind refuses 
to grasp more. 

Indeed, this Museo alone is worth a pilgrimage to 
Madrid, but one could not help regretting that its 
gems are set away in a country which has little else 
to warrant a visit to it. 

As we took one more look around, away in the little 
room at the left we came upon Miss Driscoll and her 
young compatriot Dalghren. 

So absorbed were they in contemplation of " La 
Meninas " that the little white glove rumpled carelessly 
in his hand lay unnoticed until he rose to greet us. 

How charmingly fresh they looked in the old Museo 
of the Prado. 

A new world come to an old. 

Anon we were joined by the rest, Mrs. Driscoll and 
the young Aunt discoursing heatedly on the " tem- 
pora " method, while Driscoll brought up the rear, one 
hand on the Englishman's arm, in the other the faith- 
ful Baedeker. 

We made a merry party, to the open disapproval of 
the many visitors and the amusement of the stolid at- 
tendants. 

It seems they are pursuing their way carelessly 
southward with indefinite ideas as to time and place. 

Mrs. Driscoll thinks it possible that she may go 
through to Gibraltar and maybe north again. Mr. 
Driscoll thinks likewise. 

Mr. Hale has mines in the south that — er — need his 
attention — for a day or so. 



Sights in Madrid 57 

After lunch we saw objects of interest of another 
character. 

Thanks to the efficacious, not to say fluent Beiiunes, 
we were able to see the stables of Alfonso alone and to 
ask as many questions as we wished without the dis- 
tractions of a crowd. 

One hears so much of the wonderful equipages of 
royalty that an intimate view was anticipated with 
interest. 

Following our uniformed guide we traversed a long 
passage or so, climbed some steps and passing along a 
narrow corridor, lined with sporting prints, found our- 
selves at one end of a hall fully four hundred feet long 
and perhaps fifty wide. 

Here everything was as neat as wax. The floor was 
scrubbed to the acme of cleanliness — causing some one 
to remark that it was the cleanest place bv far that 
we had seen in Spain. 

Dismissing the guide Beiiunes detailed the different 
objects of interest with the ease of an indexed cata- 
logue. 

Saddles, harnesses, liveries, lances, spurs, bits and 
riders' accoutrements of every description lined the 
walls in glass cases or occupied the center space of the 
room. 

In all, one hundred and sixty separate harnesses and 
as many saddles occupied their respective places ready 
for instant use, oiled and polished. Modern equipments 
were most in evidence, but there were many of an earlier 
period as well. 

In the side cases were the most gorgeous of trap- 



58 Spain of To-Day 

pings, liveries for State occasions with gold-braided 
coats and hats. Each harness designed for a certain 
purpose had its full complement of saddles, cloths, liv- 
eries, lances, swords and spurs for the outriders and 
footmen. 

In one place hung a black leather harness to match 
the carriage of black ebony in which rode Joanna the 
Crazy, wife of Philip the Bell; so-called for her won- 
derful devotion to her husband. 

The saddles, each on its separate stand, were ar- 
ranged in the center down nearly the full length of the 
hall. First came the every-day saddles of Alfonso and 
Victoria, mostly of the English model, some made in 
Madrid, others brought from England. A little fur- 
ther on were the saddles used by the King and his cour- 
tiers, the generals and the attendants for State re- 
views, and beyond these were little saddles used by Fer- 
dinand VII. and Isobella II. when they were children. 
Here also were a score or more for the royal children 
of a later day. 

Then came the saddles presented to Alfonso by King 
Leopold, by Russia, by Turkey and by Morocco — the 
latter of the richest possible description. One was 
made after the style in vogue in the time of Charles III. 
and bore the date 1774. 

In the center of the hall, midway down, is an ex- 
cellent bronze of King Alfonso on horseback. 

Further on were stacks of spears, score on score, used 
in the jousts of 1846. 

In between were the harnesses, varying from the 



Sights in Madrid 59 

plainest to the richest in mountings of bronze and 
silver. 

One case alone was given to bits of every description, 
while there were whips enough for an army of team- 
sters. 

At the further end of the long room were cases of 
dress swords, daggers and pistols, lances and spurs, 
while even steel boots for the horses were not forgotten. 

Perhaps the richest trappings of all, in this stable 
worthy of Aladdin's conjuring, were in the cases at the 
side, that contained saddle-cloths and carriage-cloths 
of gold, silk and brocade. Of these some were one hun- 
dred and fifty years old. Many were presents from 
the royalties of other lands. 

Stands of plumes, cases filled with bugles and drums, 
holsters of fine workmanship for pistols, automatic bits, 
richly decorated saddle-bags from Tangier, and what- 
not, completed an array that if put into use at one 
time must equip the most gorgeous pageant imagin- 
able. 

Our next thought was for the horses that carried 
such a wealth of trappings. 

On our way down to the stables which occupy the 
floor below we noticed a large picture of Alfonso on 
horseback leading his troops, beneath which was a 
bronze showing the Spanish type of horseman. 

Like the harness-room above, the stable was scrupu- 
lously clean. 

All down the center is a tiled flooring, on either side 
of which, ranged along the walls, are the separate 



60 Spain of To-Day 

stalls. These were in most cases large box stalls, with 
tiling on the sides and walls, giving room for eighty- 
two saddle and sixtj-six carriage horses. Above the 
crib in each stall is a little placard with the name of the 
occupant thereon. 

There were " Bayswater," " Sonata," " Auto," " Ar- 
gentina," a present from the Argentine Republic, 
" St. Cyr," a gift from the President of France, 
" Senorita," a grey Andalusian mare, a present from 
Cordoba. " Artillero," a heavy chestnut stallion, was 
a gift from the army, while " Ali," the King's favorite, 
was a good-looking sorrel with three white stockings 
and a white blaze. 

On the other side of the stable was " Windsor," win- 
ner of eleven prizes — mostly thirds and fourths — which 
horse the King rode on his recent visit to Barcelona 
and Saragossa. 

Next " Windsor " came " Zefir," a pure white Ara- 
bian stallion, and " Orion," a brown chestnut, gifts of 
Archduke Frederick, of Austria. 

The Queen's favorite, " Rio Frio," died on her recent 
visit to Barcelona and the rumor that she would not 
for some time choose his successor was just going the 
round of the palace. 

Altogether the display of horses was disappointing 
and would hardly compare with the stud of an Amer- 
ican country gentleman. 

Crossing the courtyard we passed the stone bath 
for the horses and stopped for a moment in the new 
garage and carriage house which was just being com- 



Sights in Madrid 61 

pleted. In one half of this building — which is perhaps 
two hundred feet long and seventy-five high — were 
several of Alfonso's thirteen automobiles, his favorite, 
it was said, being the Panhard-Levassor. 

Among them was a tiny motor complete, a present 
to the royal children from the Infanta Isobella. 

Passing into the courtyard which directly faces the 
palace we entered the present carriage building. Here 
were ranged side by side one hundred and fifty-four 
carriages of all descriptions, including twenty State 
equipages. 

First at hand on the left were six with rich red trim- 
mings, employed to convey the most important ambas- 
sadors from the station to their hotels and later to 
royal audience. Lesser ambassadors have to be con- 
tent with other red carriages, not so gorgeous, but 
very gay by themselves. 

Next stood the carriage of Joanna, " Loca," said 
to be the first driven in the streets of Madrid. This 
was hand carved from black ebony and was entirely 
without springs, the body being supported to the 
frame by leather straps. 

Beyond were the highly ornamented carriages of 
Charles V. and Charles IV., and of Maria, with rich 
Sedan chairs between. 

The most gorgeous in finish and appearance were 
the two next in line, presents from Napoleon Bona- 
parte to Charles III. and manufactured in Paris. 

One had silver ornamentation and enamelled panels. 
The other had inlaid tortoise shell door panels, two feet 



62 Spain of To-Day 

square, and both were upholstered in the richest man- 
ner. From the doors of the carriages which set very 
high were steps unfolding neatly to the ground. 

In the latter carriage rode the mothers of Alfonso 
and Victoria in the wedding procession, to which the 
newly wed King and Queen repaired after the bomb 
had wrecked their own. 

Beyond these stood the mahogany carriage of Fer- 
dinand VII., in which Ena of Battenberg rode to old 
San Jeronimo to become Queen Victoria, while beyond 
that stood the royal carriage, made in the time of 
Ferdinand and distinguished by a crown which sur- 
mounted it. 

This last was gorgeously decorated in gilt and had 
rich upholstering inside. On the back was embroid- 
ered a view of Cadiz, with other views on the sides. 

At this carriage the anarchist aimed his bomb, iden- 
tifying the royal equipage by the crown on its top. 

It is shown where the bomb struck the step on the 
whiffletree, pieces breaking the spring and lamp and 
leaving marks elsewhere that the repairs could not 
hide. The two pole horses and a leader were killed as 
well as two of their riders, while the driver and six oth- 
ers in attendance around the carriage were wounded, 
besides the soldiery. 

Beyond the crown carriage stood one of the time of 
Isobella II., used by the Prince of Wales at the wed- 
ding. 

At the further end of the room was a chariot for the 
procession of the Patron Saint of Madrid, while the 
rest of the room was taken up by more modern car- 
riages of all kinds. 



Sights in Madrid 63 

Passing through another stable containing thirty- 
eight fine-looking mules for royal use, we completed our 
inspection of this rather unique stable and emerged 
onto the street. 

A little way from the palace, towards the city 
proper, stands the Cortes, a modern-looking building 
set in from the street, but lacking pretension in out- 
ward appearance. 

The Senate chamber is interesting, while in other 
rooms are a few noteworthy paintings. The chief of 
these which will strongly command your attention, are 
a representation of the surrender of the keys of Gra- 
nada to Ferdinand and Isobella, and a picture of the 
Queen Regent, Maria Christina, mother of the present 
King, taking the royal oath before the court. 




EL ESCORIAL— MADRID 

LAST evening we expended each three and 
one-half pesetas, say seventy cents, for an 
A orchestra seat at the opera, " La Africana," 
rendered, or better, executed, in Spanish. Re- 
member this is the opera of the people, while the royal 
opera, said to be one of the best in Europe, is not yet 
open. 

The house was built by an American, Price, as a 
place for an indoor circus, and a circus we witnessed 
last night although under a different name. 

Some of the voices were rather good, but, with the 
exception of one or two, were deficient in training. Un- 
doubtedly you smile, thinking of my wonderful ear for 
music, but here I was a qualified critique. 

The acting — where any was seriously attempted — 
was the most atrocious I have ever seen outside of 
Spain, but what can one expect for three and one-half 
pesetas, and it certainly amused the audience, which 
included babes in arms to grey-haired old ladies of 
seventy. 

One act was enough and we left to go to the 
" Apollo " — the second best theatre in Madrid — where 
for one peseta we were privileged an hour's complete 
performance. 

64 



El Escorial— Madrid 65 

Understanding stage Spanish as little as we do, it 
furnished a wonderful cure for insomnia. The only 
thing I really believe that kept us awake was Benunes* 
running translation in a whisper, that must have 
carried to the upper galleries, that could not be 
stopped. 

This morning we went to El Escorial, the burial 
place of the Spanish kings. 

The day was dark and rainy and was in harmony 
with the gloominess of the place. 

It is called one of the seven wonders of the world and 
is an immense granite building erected in the Guadar- 
rama Mountains in a location thirty miles out of 
Madrid, perfectly chosen for its desolation and soli- 
tude. It was built by Philip II., after the wishes of 
his father, and is a huge pile, constructed from the 
native rock, plain, massive and unattractive. 

In the morning we visited the Pantheon and the 
library. 

In the afternoon, after lunch at the new and clean- 
appearing Hotel Regina, we went through that part 
of the building which was used as a royal palace, where 
is undoubtedly one of the finest collections of tapestries 
in Europe, chiefly after Gobelin and Goya. 

We saw also the room where Philip spent his last 
days as king and monk, where are shown the table at 
which he sat, with a chair to support his leg, and signed 
decrees that made the world tremble. There is also 
shown the chair in which he was daily carried to a 
near-by peak from which he could observe the progress 
of the work. 



66 Spain of To-Day 

A little beyond is the room, hardly more than a cell, 
in which he died facing the High Altar. 

The structure would seem to reflect the character of 
its builder who brought Spain to the height of its 
power after Isobella and Ferdinand had laid the foun- 
dation of the country's greatness. 

It is Spartan in simplicity; Danteic in sombreness 
and Titanic in size. 

The main dome is said to be two hundred and ninety- 
five feet high, while the pillars supporting it are of al- 
most inconceivable size. The whole structure impresses 
one with its indestructibility. 

A story is told that during the progress of the work, 
owing to the extreme plainness of the structure, the 
rumor went abroad that the builders lacked wealth, 
which threatened to delay its completion. To disprove 
this, as the structure was being finished, Philip caused 
a brick of gold to be set in the highest dome, which 
can be quite easily seen from the outside. 

Returning to Madrid this evening we were met with 
the news of Taft's and Hughes' great victory — Mr. 
S cabling as he had promised he would do, al- 
lowing us to give the news to others less favored. 

It is perhaps not quite fair to form an opinion of 
the Spaniard and his country on so short an acquaint- 
ance, but let me call it an opinion subject to possible 
revision and I will tell you of the impression thus far 
given us, which I am aware does not coincide with the 
stories that lure so many to the discomforts of this 
country. Besides we are told that we shall find another 



El Escorial— Madrid 67 

type in the south, and we therefore naturally sum up 
our conclusions to this point which is the very heart 
of the country. 

There are evidently two distinct classes in this land 
of indolent persuasion — those who by their birth and 
wealth do not have to work for their living and those 
who are obliged to struggle for their existence, and the 
latter's appearance of most meagre existence would 
seem to indicate either oppression or the limitation of 
work to the minimum of utmost necessity, or both. 

One cannot but be impressed with the evidences of 
Spain's former wealth, religious zeal and greatness, — 
as seen in Toledo, the Galleries, the Musees and the 
Palace here in Madrid and in El Escorial and in the 
four other country seats of Spanish royalty round 
about Madrid. 

But the burden of royalty seems to have borne its 
fruit in a worn-out, impoverished and degenerated peo- 
ple — the half that should be of the greater strength 
and in whom is spelled Spain's fate. 

From the Basque Provinces, from the southern slopes 
of the Pyrenees, to Madrid, we observed vast stretches 
of land cultivated, although arid in appearance, with 
no visible evidences of separate ownership. 

Here and there were towns — no suburbs, no hamlets 
surrounding them, only one big sleeping place for the 
workers returning great distances from their daily 
toil. 

There were no individual, fenced-off farms. On the 
landscape would appear a few peasants toiling away 
with mule or donkey in the furrows while one looked 



68 Spain of To-Day 

in vain for signs of habitation in the flat country 
which gave observation for miles around. 

Presently as we whirled along would appear the 
solid, compact town, looking as if it had to be squeezed 
within the area of its walls and indicating that the 
peasant of to-day has not progressed beyond the ways 
of his ancestors. 

All this can mean but one thing, — accepting as im- 
possible in that earlier form of civilization the idea of 
a community of interest — and that one fact is the own- 
ership of vast areas of the land by the very few 
and practical slavery for their existence for the 
many. 

You regret their degradation, but see no hope, un- 
der present conditions, for their betterment and the 
consequent development of the country. 

How the ownership became gradually a solitary one 
is a tale of history, but it is not to be doubted that in 
this wide separation of her classes lies Spain's weak- 
ness. 

Here in Madrid, — being voyageurs for pleasure and 
not advantaging ourselves of letters from friends at 
home — we have been content to observe practically only 
the one great class, the masses, which seem to com- 
prise the middle and lower orders of other countries as 
here the two rub elbows and merge indiscriminately 
their pleasures and their business. 

The plane of their development is shown in the low 
order of their entertainments — not of course citing 
that of the bull-ring, which is National and not peculiar 
to any one class. 

The amusements serve to crowd the theatres nightly 



El Escorial— Madrid 69 

with average Spanish citizens, with performances that 
would remain on a Bowery stage only long enough to 
make a hurried exit. 

With the exception of the types seen on the drives — 
similar to the better grades of all countries — the aris- 
tocratic class has not, in our short stay, been observ- 
able, nor is there any more evident effort on their 
part to alleviate the condition of their less fortunate 
compatriots. 

A custom, — or rather a habit, — of the Spaniard 
seems to be to remain up all night. Without referring 
to the news venders who make the twenty-four hours 
miserable with their doleful prolongation of " El Uni- 
verso-o-o-Q " " Nueva Mundo-o-o," I mean those who 
have even less excuse to throng the streets at unearthly 
hours. 

Fancy a cafe thronged with men and some women 
who over a single cup of coffee will sit and talk of the 
Lord knows what for three and four hours at a stretch. 

The shows are out at twelve or after. For the next 
three hours the Spaniard, — no matter of what class, 
— is awake and around, and you do not wonder at his 
indolence at work next day. 

Everywhere are seen examples of the Spaniard's 
fiendish cruelty towards animals, and take it all in all, 
while we are impressed with the evidences of a former 
wealth or greatness, we cannot feel much enthusiasm 
for the Spain of to-day. 

Up beyond the Museo del Prado, is the artillery 
museum for which they have been collecting specimens 
for a hundred years. With beautiful disregard to 



70 Spain of To-Day 

system much of the collection is jumbled together in 
the basement of the building and only recently has any 
one been found with sufficient interest to start a cata- 
logue of the many valuable pieces. 

Here are guns of six centuries, from the iron- 
strapped weapons of the fourteenth century to the 
rapid firers of to-day. 

There were guns in two pieces which when fired must 
have created a question as to whether the enemy stood 
in as much danger as the men handling the gun. This 
was called Recamara de Bomb ar da, — the end taking 
the powder being known as the recamara, and the 
other piece loosely fitted thereto the carta. The 
wooden carriage supporting this gun was very odd — 
a cross bar at the muzzle end being employed to raise 
or lower the aim. One imagined that a sort of bait 
must also have been used with it to get an obliging 
enemy in front. 

Scattered in careless confusion were falconettes and 
versos of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, bronze 
falconettes, heavy English guns of an early period, 
twisted outside with a smooth bore and of bronze; 
versos rescued from the bottom of the sea in the har- 
bor of Santander and belonging to no one knows what 
nation ; little guns and big fellows able to knock down 
the defense which progressed in strength pari 
passu with their increasing power. There were also 
heavy mortars of the fifteenth century and beside them 
the projectiles — huge stone balls some of which 
weighed two hundred kilos and were fifty-five centi- 
metres in diameter. Near at hand were two curious 



El Escorial— Madrid 71 

little guns each about a foot long, mounted together 
on a wooden carriage, and in a different part of the 
same room were guns of Charles V., bearing the royal 
coat of arms with the pillars of Hercules. 

In the main room of the basement is preserved the 
carriage in which General Prim was assassinated in 
1870, looking as if it had been just rolled in with the 
splintered bullet holes still showing. The Spaniards 
love to retain relics of this sort. 

This part of the collection was completed by cannon 
of all possible descriptions since gunpowder was first 
discovered, stacks of rifles, shields of swords and every- 
thing else military, possible to imagine. 

In the hallway leading to the upper rooms was a 
huge bell from Cochin China. 

One very interesting room contained models of mod- 
ern siege and coast defense guns and of all kinds of 
gun-carriages, packs and trappings that would have 
made an American boy crazy with joy. 

Here also is shown the uniform of Boabdil, the last 
Moorish King of Granada, with his lance and swords 
having straight blades and handles richly inlaid with 
gold, ivory and enamel. In another case was the sword 
of Aliator, contemporary Moorish mayor of a near-by 
town. 

Upstairs were Cuban and Philippine weapons and 
primitive armor. These included horribly long knives 
mounted on long staffs and wooden and hide 
shields. 

A curious thing was a sword made from the " bill " 
of a swordfish such as the South Sea Islanders used. 



72 Spain of To-Day 

There were also clay models of Madrid in 18'30 and 
of the military school town of Segovia. 

In all there were three floors of every manner of 
implement pertaining to war. 

I went at it enthusiastically, a mistake, and to- 
night am tired of war, tired of sightseeing, of Madrid 
and of — many things. 

We are just in from a trip to the Museum of Mod- 
ern Art, where we saw some good sculptures and the 
greatest collection of pictures with gory and grue- 
some subjects that you ever saw. 

Many of the canvases were excellent, but there is 
no accounting for the Spanish taste. As our friend 
of the Prado remarked, " There is as much blood 
spilled at the Modern Art Gallery as in the bull- 

* 99 

ring." 

After that we visited the private atelier of Ricardo 
de Madrazo, — grandson, son and nephew, not to say 
brother-in-law and uncle of famous painters. I suspect 
that our friend and guide, Benunes, has a commercial 
turn and was hoping, — just hoping. 

Senor Madrazo is a most courteous and I should 
say an accomplished gentleman, but, maybe influenced 
by the canvases we had recently seen, we discovered 
nothing of unusual merit. Still some portraits, a 
Venice scene and a few copies were well worthy of note. 

If you could but see, out of my window, the droll 
little donkeys soberly leading their trains across the 
crowded square. 

Imagine the Place Vendome cut in half — one side 



El Escorial— Madrid 73 

crescent-shaped, the other straight — with the build- 
ings white, yellow and covered with balconies and you 
will have some idea of the Puerto del Sol. 

Truly it is a busy place. 

At all times across it stream the crowds of peasants 
and working people of the city, processions of school 
children in serious line, yellow street cars with big, 
blue signs, ox and donkey carts from Mount Ararat, 
the ever-present military, Senoras and Senoritas lack- 
ing both hats and beauty, Russians with furs for sale, 
automobiles and carriages and stray dogs. A verita- 
ble potpourri. 

Off to the left there, a little way, you come to the 
Plaza Mayor — where were burned so many heretics. 
At one side a house is designated by a large crown 
on its roof as the spot from which Philip II. used to 
watch the proceedings. 

Going still further and turning to the right in the 
direction of the palace, you cross a fairly high bridge, 
El Viaduct o, having an eight-foot iron picket railing 
to prevent would-be suicides from throwing themselves 
to the ground below. 

The only bit of present-day romance about the city 
are the young fellows talking to their Senoritas in the 
balconies above. 

Whether they are both bashful, which I doubt, 
or the caller is fearful of the parents' reception, or it 
is the custom — I know not. 

This is the pleas an test day we have had in Madrid, 
— as far as weather is concerned, — but, truth to tell, 
we are not sorry to leave it. 



74 Spain of To-Day 

That Benunes drags us everywhere, heedless of our 
protestations that we have seen enough. 

It seems to be a matter of duty with him to give us 
the full dose, consoling us by the remark that even if 
we do not enjoy it now we will not regret it later. 

In spite of our entreaties he hustled us off this morn- 
ing to the Royal Armeria where is a profusion of 
armor, swords, lances, maces, pistols, guns, horse- 
armor and dog-armor from mediaeval days down. 
Figures on horseback fully equipped with the weapons 
and armor of different ages gave a warlike appearance 
to the hall. 

A close study of this world-renowned collection with 
that in the artillery museum would read for one the 
history of nations. But, Sapristi, one cannot swallow 
everything and, Benunes or no Benunes, we have had 
for the moment enough. 

We, therefore, contented ourselves with a brief 
glance at the many objects and inveigled Benunes into 
the carriage, but not before he had dragged us to the 
Parade balustrade — for the Armeria adjoins the palace 
— for an enchanting view of the royal garden and be- 
yond, the insignificant, meandering Manzanares, 
banked with white fields of drying laundry. 

Reluctant of being elsewhere while in Madrid, we 
hastened to the Museo del Prado for another charm- 
ing two hours among the masters. 

Think of sixty odd Velasquez in one collection, in- 
cluding his very best works ; nearly as many Murillos ; 
not one but many Rubenses ; fewer Raphaels, but " Las 
Perlas w ; Titians in abundance, and only Rembrandt of 



El Escorial— Madrid 75 

all the world's great masters represented but by a 
single work. 

In the Salon de Velasquez, an American girl copying 
" Las Hilanderas " excited the admiration of the at- 
tendants made callous by twenty years' association 
among originals and copies. 

They said that during all that time they had never 
seen a copy made of the masterpiece so speedily and 
yet so truthfully. We wondered who she might be. 

Another of Velasquez, " Los Borrachos," the 
" Topers," — seems to rank close with the three incom- 
parable canvases. 

This time after a hasty glance at the indifferent col- 
lection of statuary in the basement we lingered only 
before the greater works which make a visit elsewhere 
in the Museo a waste of time. 

Such a profusion of marvellous canvases it is diffi- 
cult to imagine together under one roof, and it seems 
a matter of more than local interest that they should 
be exposed to the apparent danger of a building hav- 
ing inflammable floors and interiors. 

One does not feel eager for other sights after an 
hour here. It is better to think over, undistracted, the 
beauties which keep recurring to you rather than to 
seek for more just for the sake of seeing. 

So we have taken it leisurely this afternoon, Befiunes 
having provided a swell-looking turnout with coachman 
and footman to take us around the city. 

Passing through the Puerto del Toledo which, be- 
fore the railroad, guarded the chief approach from 
that city, we crossed the bridge of the same name to 



76 Spain of To-Day 

the other bank of the Manzanares where we had an 
excellent " vista general " of the city. With the roofs 
of the houses rising regularly like the upper surface of 
a globe, there stood out most prominently the dome of 
San Francisco El Grande, the new seminary and the 
Royal Palace. 

Really the Palace is quite an affair, with its walled- 
in Parade, the main buildings of the Palace proper and 
the detached stables, all covering an extensive area and 
situated on the highest ground. By comparison it 
makes Buckingham Palace look all the more a bar- 
racks. 

As we followed the further bank of the Manzanares, 
past the little houses of the vigilant " octroi," an in- 
teresting sight was afforded of the busy washerwomen 
scrubbing away by the little canals running parallel 
to the main stream, while acres upon acres of waving 
" lavado " drying in the breeze, gave at a distance the 
appearance of a field of snow. 

Crossing to the city again we came to the rear of 
the Palace and stepped for a moment into the royal 
gardens, which are very pretty indeed. 

The persuasive power of the peseta is always a 
marvel, yet they say all money in Spain is bad. 

An English gentleman recounts a peculiar experi- 
ence in Granada. 

Wishing to save time on his departure, he sent his 
baggage on from his hotel to the station and wandered 
up to the Alhambra for a last look around. 

After a bit he glanced at his watch and discovered 




- 



< 
o 

Pi 



El Escorial— Madrid 77 

that barely time sufficed in which to reach the station, 
purchase his tickets and board the train. 

Hurrying thither he called for his tickets and laid 
before the official the requisite amount in notes of the 
Bank of Spain. 

" I cannot take those, sir," said that alert gentle- 
man. 

" Cannot take the notes of the strongest institution 
in Spain," exclaimed my friend. " I have just changed 
my English money into them. I have no time to go 
back. Send for the station master." 

That gentleman also refused, adding : " It would be 
as much as my position is worth to do so." 

" But here comes my train," cried my friend in vexa- 
tion. " What am I to do if your best bank notes are 
worthless? It is the only kind of money I have with 
me." 

" I cannot accept the Bank of Spain notes," re- 
peated the station master, " but you may give me your 
private check for the amount." 

" Which I promptly did," finished this gentleman, 
who, head of one of London's largest banking houses, 
chuckled as he thought of a stranger's check being 
of more present value than the often-counterfeited 
notes of Spain's greatest bank. 

But here Benunes' grandiloquent air and a few 
pesetas waved back the corporal's guard at the gate- 
.way and allowed us a view within. 

A further climb and we are in front of the palace. 



78 Spain of To-Day 

Benunes seeks our approval ; " Grand, beautiful, eh ? 
You do not think so ? " 

Thence we drove through Calle Arenal, Puerto del 
Sol and Calle Alcala to the other end of the city, en- 
tering the fashionable drive beyond El Retiro and 
Parque de Madrid, where we saw a number of fine car- 
riages of the aristocracy, a Count of Something-or- 
Other lonesomely tooling a four-in-hand, and automo- 
biles and riders. Just a bare suggestion of Central 
Park and old Fifth Avenue. It is a strange thing, but 
they say that there has not been a Jew in Spain since 
they were expelled in time of Isobella. 

A turn up the Paseo de Recoletos and the Paseo de 
la Castellana, then back to the hotel. That is the 
regular route of the fashionable afternoon, — except 
the hotel, — whose votives are said never to walk, 
" toujours en voiture" as a Spanish lady put it, until 
the lamps are lit. 

Everything here is arranged for convenience, where 
no one hurries. Theatres and the opera rarely begin 
before nine, — you may take your time with your coffee 
and cognac, — then the city is bustling until weird 
hours in the morning. No wonder they do not like to 
work. But Madrid is a place for pleasure only. " A 
poor imitation of Paris," the fair copyist in the Museo 
del Prado called it ; but we would never have made the 
comparison. 

There is much the traveller learns in Spain. The 
first item in his education is that the Sud Express is 
worth while, although far more expensive than the or- 



El Escorial— Madrid 79 

dinary trains. The second point comes to his atten- 
tion when he finds himself held up for a comfortable 
rearrangement of his sleeping accommodations, and no 
matter how crowded the trains, he can usually obtain 
comfortable quarters if he takes the obvious course and 
stills the itching palm of the man in charge. 



CORDOBA 



A WONDERFUL moon lighted our departure 
from Madrid which made the country, flat 
and uninteresting by day, look almost beau- 
tiful. 

The expresses in this country run more smoothly 
than in our own. The sleepers are lighter than our 
heavy Pullmans and there is not that continual bump, 
bump, that rocks our commercial traveller to sleep. 
Nevertheless there are other drawbacks, — animate and 
inanimate, — and it was after a none too restful night 
that we wakened in the pitchy blackness of early morn- 
ing, which by the time we had pulled up at Cordoba 
had given way to a pale light in the east. 

Rolls and coffee at the little railway restaurant, and 
we can truthfully say we have seen the sun rise upon 
the glories of Spain. 

A rickety stage bumped us over the uneven cobbles, 
through the narrowest of alleys to a very picturesque 
little hostelry, the Grand Hotel Suisse. C'est ca. 

We are up in a clean-looking room, — first point of 
interest and inspection, — across hall from the patio, 
which you must know is a wonderfully neat little court 
with often a fountain, plants and birds, whose marble 
floor is washed by the rains of heaven. 

80 



Cordoba 81 

The Prince of Bavaria, incognito, has rooms near at 
hand and on the patio, but we overlook a city square 
and, beneath our window, a little yard wherein a don- 
key, made patient by the eternal stick, goes blindfolded 
on his endless rounds to draw water for the hotel. 

But here is a bit of Spain of our dreams, quaint, old, 
vividly colored, primitively rough, but clean and at- 
tractive. 

In its Moorish characteristics of narrow, winding, 
cobbled streets, straight, blank walls at all angles, 
whose infrequent doors allow glimpses of the attract- 
ive patios within, its red tiled roofs and conglomera- 
tion of houses, shops and churches, it reminds us more 
of Toledo than of any other Spanish city we have seen. 
But the resemblance is mostly of outward appearance. 

Toledo has the unattractiveness of age without re- 
juvenation. The people seem as old as the centuries 
old buildings ; it is a town clinging desperately to the 
glory of bygone days, — a monument alone to the 
past. 

Here is a city just as ancient in its building, with 
the same inconvenient labyrinth of passages of Moor- 
ish fancy and a similiar confusion of buildings, whose 
population has also shrunk twenty fold; but a city 
with a reason for its present being. 

Cordoba is the center of a thriving agricultural 
country. The people seem not merely to exist, but anx- 
ious to do something for their betterment. There is a 
wholesome atmosphere here that is totally lacking in 
Toledo, whose very stones seem to exude odors. 



82 Spain of To-Day 

Mr. T , who has been wandering aimlessly but 

not noiselessly about the rooms, here breaks into the 
train of thought : " That's a mean, contemptible trick 
on that mule " ; which we heartily echo and laying pen 
aside go below and join him in " tost ado, huevos 
pasado y cafe con leche." Our appetites are return- 
ing. 

The programme as laid down by " El Sabio," — 
in American, the " Wise Guy," — is to stop in Cordoba 
overnight. 

Now, as further acquaintance shows, this would not 
have been a hardship. But mindful of Toledo and per- 
haps to assert our Yankee independence we have re- 
belled and announced our intention of proceeding to 
Sevilla to-night. 

Overruled by our united persuasions and threats, 
" El Sabio " is as one without a kingdom, and his 
gloom overshadows all. 

But come with us on the walk we took this morning. 
Made undignified and maybe lightheaded by our early 
rising, our whistling awoke the echoes of the walled 
canons of streets and set every dog barking around the 
corners. 

The amazed populace gazed in astonishment at our 
choruses, but the frown of Benunes, which nothing 
could dispel, checked all familiarity but our own. 

Up, down and around we went, to the appropriate 
tune of " Up the Street," looking at balconies, peering 
unashamed in at patios, — " muy benitoing " anyone 
who appeared, and finally coming unexpectedly upon 



Cordoba 83 

a large, crowded market in the full swing of early 
morning activity. 

Cuts of meat, strange-looking herbs, vegetables and 
fruit of all descriptions, loaded the counters and stalls 
with their attractive displays. 

Such an economical way they have of distributing 
milk, — and the poor goats seem to know where to go 
and just when to stop. 

Soon, in front of us, after perplexing winding and 
twisting, appeared the moss-grown and age-colored 
walls of the Mezquita, surmounted by the brown bel- 
fry tower at one end and the dome of the Cathedral 
in the center. 

Mosque and Cathedral; no wonder you pause. 

For here is an unique example of history's progress 
and of race succeeding race. 

Hither to this land of promise came the Moors one 
thousand odd years ago, dominating the fading Visi- 
goths. Being an energetic and thrifty people and 
finding fulfillment of the promise, they prospered and 
builded them here a Mecca city of their travels and a 
wondrous temple of worship. 

Four centuries later the Christian Spaniards, push- 
ing ever southward their victorious march, expelled the 
Moslems and within their gigantic temple — in its very 
center — erected a Cathedral to their own religion. 

As we entered from the street, our first view was of 
the patio planted with rows of orange trees and royal 
palms, and it seemed as if at the same time we had 
stepped into another country and another age. 



84 Spain of To-Day 

Unconsciously your voice sinks to a whisper; the 
question halts on your lips. 

With the fading fragrance of the orange trees you 
breathe the atmosphere of the ancient days. 

You lurk behind a column and look out upon the 
patio bathed in the glare of a mid-summer sun. 

The fountains are playing and above the splash of 
the waters you hear the shrill singing of the birds in 
the lofty palms. 

A motley throng crowds the generous space, grouped 
about the fountains, loitering beneath the palm shade 
or strolling in the cool shadow of the walls. 

The Moslems are gathered to gossip before their 
hour of prayer. 

From many a turban glints a royal jewel; the simple 
clothes are costly, the swords richly gemmed. 

From the streets comes the murmur of the multi- 
tude, for Cordoba is in the height of Moorish power. 

Listen ! A deep bell tolls. A voice cries to Allah ; 
all forms are bent; then rising, the devout dip their 
fingers in the holy water of the fountains and move 
slowly to the open ports of the Mezquita, and as their 
shuffling footsteps are lost beyond the colonnades of 
the Mosque, you rub your eyes and look out again 
upon the scene of to-day. 

The patio is surrounded by the extended walls of 
the Mosque forming with the outer wall a covered walk. 
That at the end has been closed up and from its cen- 
ter rises the belfry tower on the ruins of the Moorish 
minaret, begun by the Spaniards in 1593. 

In the patio, whose very atmosphere seems yet to 



Cordoba 85 

hold the ancient suggestion of repose and rest, are 
five fountains interspersed among the trees, around 
whose edges groups of children and men and women 
lent color and a present day realism to the old world 
scene. 

The original entrances to the Mosque were direct 
from the patio, corresponding to the spaces between 
the rows of trees, but of these all except two have been 
closed up. 

Our entrance into the building itself afforded us a 
surprise from which we have hardly yet recovered. In- 
deed, it is difficult to transmit an intelligent picture of 
the vista seemingly endless beneath the low, graceful 
roof. 

The fluted ceiling of the Mezquita is not high, ris- 
ing in successive light-admitting domes to perhaps 
forty feet from the tiled floor. 

Supporting it is a veritable forest of marble col- 
umns in rows of perfect regularity from any point of 
view, while from their capitals rise gracefully double 
arches crossed with alternate bands of red brick and 
white sandstone. 

Indescribable is the effect of this apparently endless 
perspective of marble shafts, relieved by the bright 
colors of the arches, crossing and interlacing in be- 
wildering fashion. 

We counted in one direction, thirty-six columns, 
thirteen and one-half feet apart, and in the other, half 
as many columns twice as far apart, which, roughly 
estimated, gives an area to the completed structure 
of about five hundred feet square or nearly six acres. 



86 Spain of To-Day 

When I tell you that the Cathedral in its center ap- 
pears lost and the private chapels on the walls look like 
decorated cells, you will have some idea of the im- 
mensity of the Mezquita. 

This Christian choir and high altar, — of wonderful 
beauty themselves, — with which the Catholic Spaniards 
sought to drive out any suggestion of the Khoran, ef- 
faced, as well, the full effect of the interior. Permis- 
sion to erect this Cathedral was sought of Charles V. 
who, not understanding the situation, granted it 
against the protests of the Council of Cordoba, but 
when completed and the Mosque with the Cathedral in 
its center was seen for the first time by the monarch, 
he is said to have exclaimed, " You have built what 
you might have built anywhere, but you have de- 
stroyed something that was unique in the world." 

There was said to have been one thousand columns 
when the last Moorish ruler of Cordoba had added the 
finishing touches to this Moslem temple, but the Chris- 
tians removed one hundred and forty-eight to make 
room for the Cathedral. 

Whether intentionally or not, although ruler suc- 
ceeded ruler during its construction, the completed 
Mezquita formed a perfect square — without reckoning 
the space occupied by the patio. 

We first made a complete circuit of the building to 
get some conception of its wonderful extent and later 
began to notice details. 

As the structure was begun, added to, and com- 
pleted at different periods, the columns on closer in- 
spection bear slightly different appearances, while the 




< 

M 
O 

3 

o 

O 



a 



Cordoba 87 

varying capitals indicate a desire or necessity for re- 
lief from monotony. 

All of the eight hundred and fifty-two remaining 
columns indicate, by their polished bases, the multi- 
tudes of worshippers that must have brushed by them 
through the centuries. 

One column was pointed out as coming from Athens ; 
another from Turkey. Some were said to have come 
from the ruins of Carthage — but the most were 
brought from the quarries of Andalusia. 

On one of the marble columns, by the light of a 
match, we saw a small cross said to have been scratched 
by the nail of a prisoner during the years of his captiv- 
ity ; while in another, considerable holes had been worn 
by the fingers of millions of the devout. 

We saw two Mihrabs, or Khoran rooms. One, — 
Mihrab Segundo, — although partly filled up by the 
early Spaniards, yet showed the beautiful inlaid tiling 
on the walls surmounted by the most intricate carving 
and ending in a dome supported by massive carved 
arches rising to the center — four on each of the four 
sides. 

The other Mihrab, or Holy of Holies, is a marvel- 
lously ornamented room. 

The arched entrance has rich, glazed mosaic, shin- 
ing like gold after these many centuries. This room 
— only thirteen feet across, — has marble walls sur- 
mounted by a dome of one piece of white marble, say 
ten feet across and eight high, carved in the shape of 
a shell. 

A regular pathway was worn in the marble floor 



88 Spain of To-Day 

by the bare feet or knees of the many penitents, who 
made the seven times circuit of the room in pursuance 
of their form of worship. 

The room giving entrance to this is larger and is 
rich in an almost inconceivable beauty of carving and 
mosaic. 

In succeeding to their place of worship the early 
Christian Spaniards endeavored to efface as well any 
Moslem suggestion in ornamentation or decoration. 
Doorways and archways were blocked up. Walls were 
plastered over, ruthlessly covering the beauties beneath. 

The work of restoration which has been proceeding 
in leisurely Spanish fashion for the past twenty years, 
is constantly disclosing some new and unsuspected 
beauty in design or delicate carving. 

We observed workmen removing the plaster from 
delicate windows carved from the stone and from rich 
mosaics whose colors were apparently unchanged. 

The original ceiling of carved wood is only preserved 
in part, but is being replaced, following the former 
pattern. In one place where the work was proceeding, 
some of the old boards and beams, with the carving 
still showing, were employed to hold up the rubbish 
caused by the workmen. 

While the old designs and forms are being imitated 
in this work of restoration, yet the effect of originality 
and of age does not seem to be strongly imparted and 
strengthens us in the thought earlier expressed that 
to see ancient Spain one should lose no time in coming 
to it. 

The Cathedral, — or more strictly speaking the 



Cordoba 89 

choir, high altar and space between, — is of surpassing 
beauty. The choir is of mahogany from South Amer- 
ica, showing the most wonderful hand carving that 
perchance can be seen in Spain. 

On the backs of the seats, — in the Hicea Chorus, — 
are carved in succession biblical scenes from the begin- 
ning of the world. 

This work and the large figures at the back of the 
choir are wonderfully done. 

In the racks before the choir, as at Toledo, were 
books hundreds of years old, richly illuminated by 
hand, that were in daily use. 

The high altar of red marble presents an imposing 
and at the same time a beautiful appearance, while over 
the space between rises a massive dome to the fullest 
height of the main structure, although not as high as 
the belfry tower on the outer patio wall. 

In the treasury room, — near the former Moorish 
Holy of Holies, — we saw a silver and gold Custodia 
seven feet high which, with a pedestal three feet more, 
required, it is said, fifty men to carry it in the annual 
processional. 

There was also a solid silver statue of the Concep- 
tion, three feet high, a cup made from the first gold 
which Columbus brought from America, according to 
Benunes — he must have brought a ship full, — and the 
sword of San Fernando who freed Cordoba from Moor- 
ish control in the early thirteenth century. 

The immense Mezquita, — second in size only to the 
Kaaba of Mecca among all the Mosques of the Moors, 
— gives a strong suggestion of the height of power 



90 Spain of To-Day 

and wealth to which they attained in Spain during the 
few centuries of their occupancy. 

It is said that Cordoba was once a city of a million 
inhabitants, and countless indeed must have been the 
throngs that frequented this temple through Moorish 
rule. 

Around the city, in parts, are the remains of the old 
walls to whose building Roman, Goth, Moor and Span- 
iard each contributed his share as the strong, new race 
succeeded the weakening old. 

The bridge across the Quadalaquivir (pronounced 
Quadalakeeveer) still retains most of the original 
Roman foundations of two thousand years ago, and 
some of the later upper works of the Moors. The re- 
pairs that are just now being made are, however, ef- 
fectually destroying the appearance of great age. All 
this is very distressing to our friend Befiunes, who can- 
not see why Spain should not remain as a show place 
for the rest of the world. 

A little further down the river, a few old Moorish 
water mills stretch across the stream, while in dif- 
ferent parts of the town are several ancient churches. 

As we lingered by the old gate, guarding the en- 
trance from the bridge, the rain began to fall with 
tropical violence. 

Dispatching a boy for a carriage, we sought shelter 
meanwhile in a near-by shop whose windows were filled 
with local postal pictures. 

As we entered the doorway, a heated discussion at- 
tracted our attention. Through the steady musketry 



Cordoba 91 

of Spanish, now and then broke an expostulation in 
English. 

" But, my good man, here is your money," cried a 
familiar voice. 

" Muy malo, muy rnalo," said another. 

" Well, HI make it fifteen." 

" No entiendo" 

Laughingly we bade Benunes help him out, and 
glad indeed was Mr. Driscoll to shift the burden. 

If we must confess it, we have ourselves ingloriously 
called upon Benunes when anger with some pilfering 
shopkeeper had made our halting speech too slow a ve- 
hicle for the expression of our feelings. 

The dilemma into which our friend had now fallen 
was a common one. His money was bad, while the re- 
quirements of the language demanded to clear up the 
situation had gone far beyond the ability to point 
at a picture and read the shopkeeper's fingers. 

Our carriage arriving, we all bundled in and rode 
across the old Roman bridge. 

Ah, what tales those old ramparts and walls might 
tell! 

From them Roman watched the Goth approach, a 
mid, fearless, overwhelming host, sweeping the city 
like a wave of destruction. 

Generations later, a cloud appeared from the south 
and the Moslem gained sway, and now the Spaniard 
sleeps fearless in perennial peace. 

All the world, north and south of him, is civilized 
and knows itself. 



92 Spain of To-Day 

Race has met race, intermingled and run its course. 
No dream of a new world's riches leavens the pagan 
horde and endangers the barren domain of the indolent 
Don. Undistraught by foreign foe, may he fade among 
his ruins, proud of his country's past greatness, care- 
less of her future destiny. 

The streets in Cordoba — so called for politeness' 
sake — are simply accidental spaces between house 
walls, and have no apparent sense of direction or pur- 
pose. Their intertwining forms a labyrinth difficult to 
solve. Nevertheless, I thought that I could find my 
way about, and when Senor Benunes had retired with 
his disappointment for an hour's siesta, I led forth an 
expedition to view the Paseo del Gran Capitan and 
other points of interest. 

Returning, we followed a roundabout way, — just to 
prove our mastery of the situation, — and I still believe 
that I could have reached that hotel in time, although 

possibly Mr. T has ideas to the contrary, to 

which some strength may have been added by inglorious 
recourse to several Cordobians. I have at least this 
satisfaction, — it required the guidance of more than 
one to get us back. 

While I have been alternately writing and running 
to the window to plead with the miserable old donkey- 
beater below, who always stopped just as I got there, 

Mr. T , under the safe guidance of the refreshed 

and happier " El Sabio," has visited that gentleman's 
club which, built some years previously for the exer- 
cise of the national habit, is described by Mr. T 



Cordoba 93 

as one of the largest and most attractive he has ever 
seen. It is in the form of a square, with the inevitable 
but beautiful patio in the center, surrounded on all 
sides by card and refreshment rooms. 



SEVILLA 

LAST evening after we left Cordoba, we passed 
an old Moorish castle standing picturesque 
J and grim on a high rock at the right of the 
track. The moon, showing fitfully between 
scurrying clouds, brought out the bold battlements 
and commanding turrets. Surely romance and trag- 
edy had their home behind those dark walls and frown- 
ing towers which, after the Moors had gone, sheltered 
the marauding brigands. 

It brought to my mind, — albeit the railroad spoiled 
the picture, — the fascination of Lorna Doone's child- 
hood home. 

Soon there were vivid lightning and peals of thun- 
der and we arrived at Sevilla in a pouring rain. 

This Hotel de Madrid is very " quaint " and by the 
same token not so comfortable, although hardly to be 
complained of. It has two patios, one right in front 
of the entrance, filled with good-sized palms and other 
tropical vegetation. 

In truth it is an old Moorish palace transformed 
into a modern hotel. The mosaic work is still in evi- 
dence, particularly in the dining-room. Beyond this 
are the baths, but how one can, — well, I guess one 
can't. 

The weather, with the frequent showers and brilliant 

94 



Sevilla 95 

sunshine, is much like our spring, or so we thought as 
we drove this morning across the Puente de Isabel II., 
spanning the Quadalaquivir, here become more broad, 
to the gypsy quarters on the other side, called Triana. 

Recrossing, we skirted the left bank of the river, 
navigable to the sea forty-five miles away and crowded 
with ancient feluccas lying side by side with iron 
tramps. 

Presently, we passed the Tower of Gold with its un- 
derground passage to the palace whither Columbus, re- 
turning from his second voyage to America, stealthily 
crept so that Isobella might be the first in Europe to 
hear his wondrous tales of the new country. 

To the left, partly hidden by adjacent roofs, we 
saw the ruined Tower of Silver, but its purpose or his- 
tory our guide could not tell. 

Passing the palatial residence of the former Due 
de Montpensier, — Palacio Santelmo, — we drove by the 
beautiful gardens attached to the estate whose fur- 
ther half has been given to the people of Sevilla. 

Here were a profusion of royal palms, acacias, 
eucalypti, orange trees, mandarins, and all sorts of 
flowers in bloom. 

Coming back through the narrow streets we were 
shortly confronted by the old walls and the towering 
Giralda of the Cathedral, one of the largest and most 
beautiful in all Christendom, second only in size to St. 
Peter's in Rome. 

This tower of the Giralda represents, — like many 
another Spanish building, — several epochs in Spain's 
history. The foundations are still of the old Roman 



96 Spain of To-Day 

construction, its main tower of Moorish build and its 
upper part and belfry of later Spanish origin. 

We drove completely around it fascinated by the 
views from each side. The Giralda is copied in the 
tower at Madison Square, but our building with its 
higher tower seems of better proportions. 

Through the narrow alleys, our carriage barely 
clearing the house walls on either side, we proceeded 
through the former Jewish quarters, the blank walls 
suggesting little of the attractive interiors of which 
the open doorways gave occasional meagre glimpses. 

Our guide enjoys nothing better — bull-fights ex- 
cepted — than giving us some surprise, and our won- 
dering approbation is in part his reward. 

Halting the carriage before a plain exterior, — pal- 
aces or stables present the same outward appearance, 
— we entered a house built after the plan of that of 
Pontius Pilate. First there was a small patio, from 
which we entered a larger one, paved with marble flags 
and richly decorated on all sides by marvellous mosaics 
and carving. 

Built three hundred years ago it gives no indication 
of age. 

In every room, in every hall, corridor and stairway, 
are those beautiful mosaics, appearing at a little dis- 
tance like hanging Persian rugs. 

The ambassadors' hall has modern, stained-glass 
windows which are entirely out of harmony with the 
rest of the place yet lend a weird appearance to the 
patio without. 

From the roof a good view is obtained of the Gi- 



Sevilla 97 

ralda, but this is a common sight from any point in 
Sevilla and serves as a sure land-mark to the confused 
traveller. 

So imbued had we become with the dominating Span- 
ish characteristic of cruelty, that the curious little 
institution we next visited afforded a pleasing sur- 
prise. 

Stopping in an ordinary-looking street, Befiunes 
called our attention to a hole in the wall. 

Ringing a near-by bell, we were admitted by a trim- 
looking sister of charity to the foundlings' home, sup- 
ported by the contributions of the ladies of Sevilla. 

And now we saw the subtle reason for the hole in the 
wall. 

Unnoticed and unashamed, as silent as the stork's 
visit, the disconsolate mothers place the little ones on 
the soft bed within, whose tiny weight rings a bell and 
automatically turns them forever from their parent's 
ken. 

Upstairs, in their little cots, were a score or more, 
and in another room a lot of youngsters were 
busily eating at long benches, happy and well 
cared for. 

In all, the house gives refuge for a hundred or so, 
affording a cleanly and well-ordered home under the 
efficient care of the sisters of charity. 

Indeed it was a touching sight, exposing a rather 
unexpected side of the Spanish character. 

We had lunch in the quaint, old dining-room of the 



98 Spain of To-Day 

Hotel de Madrid, looking out onto the little patio 
with its palms freshened by a recent rain. 

One gets no suggestion of the interiors, from the 
outward appearance of a Spanish building, especially 
where it is of Moorish style. The blankest walls hide 
often a reposeful charm which suggests, in crossing the 
threshold, that one has stepped into another land. 
Evidently the builder had less thought for his neighbor 
than for his own menage. 

There are all sides to Spanish life and character — 
and we are here to read. 

This afternoon we attended for a very brief time 
that disgusting spectacle called a cock-fight. 

This was held in a roofed-over court of an ordinary- 
looking house, which, in the evening, serves as a music 
hall for the poorer classes of Sevilla. 

Many of the men, who thronged the seats encir- 
cling the raised ring, were clothed in white butchers' 
aprons, but as the affair progressed we found that we 
could not thereby be sure of their calling. 

As the weather was threatening the usual weekly 
bull-fight was postponed, giving us the opportunity to 
look over the ring closely. 

This one at Sevilla is quite a pretentious affair, hav- 
ing seating capacity for fully fourteen thousand peo- 
ple. From a roof, we could look down at the bulls 
penned below in little stalls whose doors were opened 
by ropes leading above. 

We are told of the incredible fortunes acquired by 



Sevilla 99 

the matadors of reputation. Some invest their earn- 
ings in real estate, while others purchase public houses 
and attract trade in proportion to the height attained 
in their earlier profession. 

Take away cock-fighting and bull-fighting and they 
say you would quickly kill the Spaniard. Prize-fight- 
ing is thought too disgusting to a people who, with 
tranquil face, unruffled by passion, lash their worn-out 
draught animals. The blows of their sticks eternally 
beat upon your ears and make your blood boil. And 
when the poor animals outlive their usefulness and ser- 
vice, they are fated for the bull-ring. It hardly adds 
to your pleasure when you realize that the poor cob 
taking you to your hotel or about the city, will shortly 
meet his cruel end before the yelling crowd. When 
the bulls prove more dangerous than expected and kill 
off all the horses provided as a part of the sport, it 
often happens that others are taken literally from the 
shafts as they wait about the Plaza de Toros so that 
the crowd may have its surfeit of blood and gore. 

It is not only complete disregard of the sufferings 
of dumb animals that contributes to the Spanish char- 
acter of brutality, but they seem also fiendishly to 
plan their torture. 

A welcome contradiction of the universal attribute 
of cruelty is the little home of the foundlings, planned 
and conducted in loving fashion. 

The few books on Spain that I have looked into 
picture it as an ideal country — a land of golden 
dreams. They rave over the beauties of barren land- 



100 Spain of To-Day 

scape and time-worn town; paint its romances and 
romance about its painters ; draw wonderful, misty 
portraits of its wealth and grandeur. 

Don't believe them. 

We have come straight through the heart of Spain, 
and clear almost to its southern coast it is a wasted 
land and a wasted people. For the most part, the 
sombre barrenness of Don Quixote's pathway is to my 
mind the truest expression of it all. 

If ever there was a people who felt the oppression 
of aristocracy and church, it is the poor people of 
Spain. Everywhere throughout this country you will 
find the grandest monuments in the world to State, 
church and the individual. If you wish to learn who 
really paid for them you have but to look at the pale, 
degenerated faces about you. 

Your instant comparison is Russia. But here the 
people seem to be broken and hopeless under the yoke. 

Remember that this picture which I have drawn from 
our observations is of the center of Spain. On the 
coast line, where touch is had with other peoples and 
where the fertile land more easily yields an existence, 
better conditions are found. This, as we have already 
observed, is true in the independent Basque Provinces. 
It is true also of the Mediterranean provinces, which 
are giving evidences of an inclination to remove them- 
selves from the control of an aristocracy, to whose sup- 
port they are large contributors. 

In Cataluna, indeed, freedom has already been 
asked. 



Sevilla 101 

The story goes that their council queried, "How 
much is the annual tax expected from us ? " and when 
told 25,000,000 pesetas they are said to have re- 
plied, " We will give 30,000,000, but grant us our 
independence." 

At the time of Alfonso's recent visit to Saragossa 
and to Barcelona, local flags so predominated over the 
royal colors that an actual conflict between the King's 
guard and the native Catalonians was narrowly 
averted. 

There the people are building their salvation on the 
foundation of their own individual efforts. And here 
around Sevilla, the conditions should be the same. The 
country is the best we have seen south of the Pyrenees. 
The faces are indeed of a better and more hopeful type, 
but again the single ownership is the rule as in the 
north. 

A past greatness seems to have carried its impression 
through the ages, which is altogether lost when one 
comes actually face to face with the people of Spain 
of to-day. 

The wonderful climate of Andalusia I am ready to 
believe in. The days so far have been springlike, with 
the unexpected downpours followed instantly by the 
bluest of skies and the brightest sunshine. 

This morning was clear and invigorating, and feel- 
ing the inclination to get away from the indolence that 
seems to enwrap the country I took Albert for com- 
pany and proceeded to Giralda. 



102 Spain of To-Day 

There are no steps up the main tower, only inclines 
running on each of the four sides, which make the 
ascent comparatively easy. 

We reached the belfry in exactly three minutes and 
then went higher for a better view. The outlook from 
the top certainly warrants the climb. 

Near at hand, the Quadalaquivir winds a dirty yel- 
low and becomes a glistening ribbon where it is lost 
in the distance. Below us are the domes and countless 
spires of the Cathedral; beyond are the age-colored 
walls of the Moorish palace, the Royal Alcazares, 
which took two hundred and fifty years in the build- 
ing. 

Still further, — in the same direction, — is the huge 
and more modern structure where six thousand women 
and girls roll cigarettes and cigars for this narcotic 
race. 

To the right of the tobacco factory lies the Palacio 
Santelmo, and beyond it the waving green vista of its 
gardens and the public park. 

Following the bank of the river above the squat 
Tower of Gold, appears the Plaza de Toros set like a 
ring in the landscape. 

But it is the view from the other side of the Gi- 
ralda that makes the sight unique. 

As your glance sweeps rapidly over the city at your 
feet, you are reminded of the pattern of a crazy quilt. 
The groundwork is of white, relieved by the occasional 
walls of blue and the yellow, green and brown of the 
moss-covered tiles. 

Here and there, the brown domes and spires of the 




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25 



Sevilla 103 

ancient churches spring above the monotony of the 
roof levels. From the Plaza Nueva and an odd patio 
or so the fronds of royal palms add freshness to the 
scene. 

The panorama is wonderful and holds you entranced, 
while your imagination follows the suggestion of aged 
wall and turret. 

Into our musing broke the sound of a big bell and 
through its measured cadence sprang the rioting of 
a higher tone. 

We hurried down the few steps to the belfry land- 
ing, and marvelled at the perfect time of the deep 
tones rung by an old blind man, while the athletic 
stunts of the young fellow who set the smaller bell 
whirling on its axis were a wonder to behold. 

Exchanging adios with the pair, we descended the 

tower and joined Mr. T and " El Sabio " at the 

Puerta del Perdon, which gives entrance to the court- 
yard of the Cathedral, and followed them into the 
structure. 

Having seen some of Spain's most remarkable edi- 
fices, we were, nevertheless, impressed with the noble 
area of this Cathedral of Sevilla, the second largest in 
Europe and only a trifle smaller than St. Peter's at 
Rome. 

The spacious elevation of the vaulted aisles gives 
room for the wonderful choir and high altar. The 
supporting pillars, eighteen feet at the base, are sixty 
in number, counting those at the sides and at the 
ends. 

The structure is built in the Gothic style. Part of 



104 Spain of To-Day 

the roof over the main edifice was destroyed by a re- 
cent earthquake while some of the columns showed also 
the work of restoration. 

The sacristy contains many relics, including three 
hundred robes made at various times from the sixteenth 
century to the present. 

At one side of the Cathedral are the remains of 
Christopher Columbus, brought from Havana after the 
Spanish war with the United States. 

In one of the private chapels that line the walls is 
Murillo's marvellous picture of St. Anthony. 

Several years ago a man concealed himself in the 
Cathedral and, after everyone else had left, proceeded 
to this picture and standing on the frame cut out the 
figure of St. Anthony as far around as he could 
reach with his knife. 

As the picture was customarily covered by a cloth 
the theft was not discovered for three days, when mes- 
sages were sent to all parts of the world. 

All trace was lost until one day, six months later, 
a Spanish gentleman had occasion to visit a small curio 
shop in New York. Here he was offered a wonderful 
picture which he at once recognized as the missing St. 
Anthony, still in the form in which it was cut from 
its frame. 

Hurrying to his lodgings, ostensibly to obtain the 
two hundred and fifty dollars asked, he called in the 
meantime at the Spanish embassy and reported his 
discovery. 

Cabling to Spain, word was shortly received to bring 
both man and picture to Sevilla, which was later fol- 



Sevilla 105 

lowed by the advice not to mind about the man, but 
to return with the picture at all hazards. 

On its receipt, wooden partitions were built around 
the chapel and after three months the artists completed 
their work of restoration, and a great church festival 
was held to celebrate the event. 

To-day the incision can only be noticed by standing 
quite near the picture in such position that the light 
strikes directly upon the place where the cuts were 
made. 

The choir and high altar have the rich wood carv- 
ing and red marble common to many of Spain's cathe- 
drals. 

There are also several fine, stained-glass windows of 
the same period, as the incomparable windows in the 
Cathedral at Toledo. 

After leaving the Cathedral, we drove back to the 
hotel to test the efficiency of the Franco-Spanish mail 
service and were both in a measure rewarded. 

Thence we went for a general ride around the city, 
passing, en route, through the Paseo de Hercules, 
which has at one end shafts of granite of exceptional 
size, surmounted by statues of Hercules and Julius 
Cassar, brought from the ruins of Italica, five miles 
away. 

Continuing through the dirty streets of the poorer 
quarter we presently emerged through one of the 
ancient gateways to the country without, and drove 
along the old Roman-Moorish walls which are now only 
standing in part. 



106 Spain of To-Day 

Last evening we had one of Benunes' little sur- 
prises, but this was quite beyond the ordinary affair 
and also the most charming glimpse of a distinctly 
Spanish feature that we have seen. He took us to 
the salon of Jose Otero Aranda, " profesor y director 
de baile" one time teacher of Otero and Carmencita, 
who won such fame, in America and elsewhere, for their 
wonderful dancing. 

We entered first the rough outer hall, crowded with 
the mothers, brothers and sisters of the performers in 
the salon beyond, whence came the rhythmic click of 
the castanets. 

Seated around one end of the poor little hall were 
a dozen or so of the prettiest little Seiioritas you would 
care to see — with their gay dresses, white mantillas 
and sparkling eyes, forming a picture in strange con- 
trast to the scene without. 

To the tune of a mandolin and guitar, accompanied 
by the " crack," " crack " of the castanets, they 
whirled in the odd gypsy dances, sometimes alone, of- 
ten by twos and fours and once with nearly a full qua- 
drille. 

As they whirled here and there, backward and for- 
ward, advancing boldly, then evading with lithe, easy 
grace, skirts and mantillas swishing, cheeks afire and 
eyes snapping, timing perfectly their steps to the 
" crack," " crack," " crack," it made a scene wholly 
fascinating and unique to this country of strange peo- 
ple and strange ways. 

One little Senorita, with bewitchingly impudent up- 
turned nose and saucy eyes, gave the dance of the bull- 



fpi,ftZA 




Types of the South 



Sevilla 107 

ring, executing fantastically all the movements of ban- 
derilleros and the matador, which won much applause 
from the four of us, forming an appreciative audience 
at the further end. 

Loli, the prettiest of them all, also came in for her 
full share of the bravos. 

Otero himself, past master in the art, danced a few 
figures with his older pupils and we left much pleased 
with the charmingly wholesome performance so differ- 
ent from the vulgarity of the Paris halls. 

If our first visit to Spain, — our first sight of the 
unique buildings, — had been to the Moorish palace of 
Sevilla, it might, perchance, have dimmed our en- 
thusiasm, aroused elsewhere. 

Surfeited as we have been with Spain's many monu- 
ments to the past, the Royal Alcazares awakened an 
almost brand new feeling of wonder and admiration. 

The Moorish structure was built on the site of the 
old Roman Pragtorium, and this gave way to the 
Spanish building, although every suggestion of archi- 
tecture, of ornamentation, in floor, arch, ceiling and 
window, is distinctly Moorish in character. 

As you approach past the towering Giralda and the 
Cathedral, you are confronted by the brown, massive 
walls which formed part of the fortifications that shel- 
tered the Moorish kings. 

Entering the frowning gateway — half expectant of 
some gruff challenge, — you find yourself at one side of 
the Court of the Oranges, where Peter the Cruel dis- 
pensed such justice as he was capable of. 



108 Spain of To-Day 

Passing through another gateway, and diverting 
from the many-columned entrance where the troops 
kept guard, and which the succeeding Spaniards 
blocked up, we traversed a narrow passage and 
emerged onto a terrace overlooking the most wonder- 
ful garden in the world. 

Acres of waving green greet your eye. The resplen- 
dent southern foliage is set off by intersecting walls, 
balconies and walks, while in the center appears the 
roof of a fairy-like little house. 

Right at hand is the square fish pond, built by 
Philip V., in 1733, with its fountains now in 
repose. 

Skirting the left of the enclosure is the high, open 
gallery along which Columbus gained his audience with 
Isobella, from the Tower of Gold. 

Below are other terraces and in front stretch many 
acres of the tropical foliage grown to its present mag- 
nificence through the centuries. 

As you turn and follow the steps on the right you 
pass between two giant magnolias, the trunk of the 
larger of which is fully three feet through at the 
base. 

Diverting a moment from the Garden, we entered a 
lower door of the palace and stopped at the end of a 
long bath under a low ceiling, where once the Sultanas 
were said to have splashed in their seclusion. 

At the further end of the bath was originally a 
fountain and behind that a cave where the cruel Peter 
confined his wife on discovering her love for his brother, 
visiting her by a secret stairway from time to time to 



Sevilla 109 

ascertain when she should succumb to the tortures of 
fast. 

Of his brother's fate we learned later, and so I 
shall tell you. 

Following our guide we came again into the garden. 
The place seemed enchanted. 

Halting for a moment, Befiunes called in a loud 
voice : " Ahora! " and at once, as if to Moses, tiny- 
streams of water sprang from the pavement at our 
feet. As he raised his voice again, " Para; Bast a," 
they ceased. 

Once more " Ahora! " and they sprang into life 
again. 

As he turned away, we lingered for a moment. The 
magic streams stopped, and from behind an adjacent 
wall came a rough old gardener who told us that the 
name of those wonderful red plants was " bandaneros." 

In the center of the garden is a mosaic-lined build- 
ing, erected in 1540, as one of the floor tiles shows, 
and used by Charles V. as a smoking-room. 

Everywhere are orange trees, intermingled with 
many other kinds of trees and shrubs. 

Flowers of every description and of wonderful per- 
fume fill the gardens, while stately palms line the 
walks, bearing in their tops huge clusters of the green 
fruit. 

Returning towards the palace, we met a courteous 
old gentleman, the Marques de Irun, whose care these 
gardens have been for the last thirty years, and which 
certainly give evidence of his painstaking, intelligent 
attention. 



110 Spain of To-Day 

We expressed to him our pleasure in the unique sight 
and he invited our inspection of the forbidden upper 
stories of the palace. 

At the door a little girl met us with a rosebud 
apiece and we rested a moment while she and her sisters 
whirled in their gyspy dance, timed by the ringing 
castanets. 

These old buildings are like the rough native fruit, 
— coarse and uninviting outside, but beautiful within. 

It is always a marvel how the rough skin of the 
pomegranate can contain such delicious kernels and 
how these bare old walls can hide such exquisite beau- 
ties. 

Entering the main part of the palace, — trying not 
to linger before the tapestry lining the royal entrance, 
— we followed the passage to the left, then to the right 
and came to a door looking upon the Patio de las 
Doncellas, the very core of that marvellous building. 

Such a riot of mosaic, such beauty in columned 
walk, in wonderfully carved arches, in latticed windows 
and marble flooring, you never saw. 

The sight dazes one. 

Unlearned in architecture as I am, it was neverthe- 
less a delight to observe the perfect perspective which 
each succeeding arch gave to the view, appearing 
again and yet again through those nearest at hand. 

As you paused you could almost fancy you heard 
the slippered tread of the Sultanas sauntering grace- 
fully along in their clinging robes and shielding man- 
tillas. 

But you do not need fancy to picture the beauties 



Se villa 111 

here. They are evident in every aspect of the court 
and the adjacent rooms and halls. 

Each room is a marvel in itself and assuredly shows 
to fullest advantage the Moorish fancy in building and 
ornamentation. 

We walked slowly through the various corridors, 
leading on and on, loath to leave one for the equal 
attractiveness of the next. 

For a moment we paused in the Hall of the Ambas- 
sadors with its main entrance from the patio and with 
its three perfect arched doorways leading to rooms 
beyond. 

Description is beggared by the picture from one 
corner of the hall through the horseshoe arch, fringed 
with the most delicate carving, to the graceful columns 
and clean white marble of the patio with its back- 
ground of mosaic and carving in barbaric pro- 
fusion. 

We crossed the little Court of the Dolls — " Patio de 
las Munecas " — where Peter slew his brother. This 
room derives its name from the many little dolls' heads 
appearing in the frescoing around the arches. 

Climbing the stairs, we came to the rooms forbidden 
to the gaze of the usual traveller. 

On the left as you enter is a little chapel built by 
the first Isobella. 

In the rooms immediately beyond are tapestries af- 
ter Gobelin, Rubens and the Flemish artist, Tenier, 
while in another room are seven exquisite tapestries 
illustrating scenes in the life of the Crazy Knight and 
his faithful Sancho Panza. 



112 Spain of To-Day 

Beyond are the living-rooms of the royal family, 
used not so very long ago, and now being renovated 
for other noble visitors. 

We were drawn to the windows by the enchanting 
view of the gardens from an upper level, stretching 
away below in their wonderful beauty. One can hardly 
imagine a more charming residence for idle royalty — 
especially in this country of barrenness. 

In the afternoon, Mr. T and I climbed the wind- 
ing inclines of the Giralda, and were rewarded by 
the view made more clear than before by a perfect 
day. 

Again as we lingered on the upper balcony, the bells 
began to sound below us and, although the din was 
tremendous, we hurried down to watch the blind ringer 
and his agile assistants. 

Even at that height, and in apparent danger of 
being carried over the wall, they would let the revolv- 
ing bells lift them above the parapet, whence, balancing 
themselves on steps inside the wall, they would throw 
their weight inward and fall prone, judging time and 
distance to a nicety so that the upward swing would, 
by a bare six inches, save them from crashing on the 
tiles. 

Returning to the Hotel de Madrid, the zealous cou- 
rier obtained another fancy rig and we rode around the 
fashionable drives which, as in Madrid, draw the in- 
dolent wealthy on pleasant afternoons. 



Sevilla 113 

There are not so many so-called sights in Sevilla 
as in Madrid, but we find our surroundings, the climate, 
the people, the general atmosphere, infinitely more 
pleasing than at the capital. 



CADIZ 

I HAVE likened the old buildings of Spain to the 
native fruit of the country ; rough on the ex- 
terior, attractive within. The comparison, in- 
versely, might be made of Spain itself. 

On its borders, — its coast line and the Pyrenees, — 
lies the country's only natural attractiveness. 

One might go almost the entire circuit — from San 
Sebastien, Bilbao, around to Cadiz and up the Mediter- 
ranean towns — and a beautiful country would be seen. 

The interior, Spain bisected, presents nothing but 
an uninteresting land, for the most part barren and 
dried up. 

But when you begin to approach the sea again, 
vegetation becomes more luxuriant, the people 
brighter, more attractive and thrifty. 

Whether it is from the invigoration of the sea or 
from the awakening contact with other peoples, it is 
hard to say ; but the fact remains that this portion of 
Spain seems the only part truly alive. 

All the way to Cadiz this morning the landscape be- 
came brighter and the country more attractive and 
beautiful. For fifty or sixty miles the road runs 
through almost continuous fields of wheat and barley. 

The land seems to undergo constant cultivation. 
With the peasants everywhere on the landscape, plow- 
ing the land with their ox-teams, preparing the fields 

114 



Cadiz 115 

for the winter crops, the country presented a most 
thrifty appearance. 

Frequently the train ran by veritable forests of olive 
trees, while orange groves were equally abundant. The 
contrast with the North Country, cis-Pyrenees, is 
vivid. 

Soon the country-side became dotted with herds of 
cattle and more particularly of the fighting bulls, a 
type peculiar to Andalusia, bred for all Spanish ter- 
ritory. For it is here that there are raised the hero- 
victims of the hundreds of rings throughout the coun- 
try. 

The best go, of course, to the rings of near-by 
Sevilla, to Madrid, to Saragossa and to the immense 
Plaza del Toros at Barcelona, but every town or city 
of any pretensions whatsoever has its ring, even if its 
ordinary victims are driven from the neighboring farms 
and the Andalusian bull is an occasion. 

Herds upon herds of these splendid animals enlivened 
the landscape on all sides and evidenced the extent of 
this industry. 

It is said that, during their raising, the bulls never 
see the -color of red until they are actually in the ring, 
when it is flaunted in their faces for the first time to 
enrage and bewilder them. Traditionally the incite- 
ment to fury in every land, when, for the first time, 
the color is thrown in their very eyes they become for 
the moment dazed, so that the trained fighter has the 
instant for his thrilling escape. 

By the way, there are regular schools for bull-fight- 
ers all over this country. Their apprenticeship begins 



116 Spain of To-Day 

in the slaughter houses, after which, while still young, 
they are trained to judgment, quickness, nerve and 
agility by slow gradations. The fighters' early prac- 
tice is in rings with cows or small bulls as the ob- 
jects for their attacks, until they are qualified to step 
into the subordinate positions in the prominent rings, 
which lead to the coveted work as matadors. 

But on to Cadiz! 

Hedges of cactus and century plants line both sides 
of the railroad which winds through a rolling, fertile 
country. Numerous flocks of turkeys are seen, often 
in hundreds, tended by children. 

The last hour and a half of the trip is through a 
vineyard country, whose terraces of vines seem endless 
and ample enough to supply the whole country with 
the common red wine. 

When still twenty-five miles from Cadiz, a view of 
the city is obtained across the intervening bay; a veri- 
table city of white, set in the amethyst sea that well- 
nigh surrounds it. 

The route leads by a little town where lived quietly 
Cervera of Santiago. Rarely in the last few years 
was this gentleman seen, keeping for the most part to 
the retirement of his estates and appearing only at 
long intervals in the gay circles of Cadiz. 

This city, — as you know, — is set at the end of a 
long, narrow peninsula leading boldly to sea, while 
with its mainland it actually forms the Isla de Leon, 
named after that searcher for the fountain of eternal 
youth who found instead the beauties of our own 
Florida. 




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Cadiz 117 

As you approach the town across the marshes, an 
odd sight is presented by the pyramids of salt show- 
ing in all directions. Looking in one way alone over 
one hundred of these regular piles were counted. 

The little sand strip running seaward from the Isla 
de Leon is flat, straight and narrow, dotted at half 
its legth by a fort. 

Crowded on the end lies " Spotless Town " with its 
fine, tall buildings, and clean, though narrow, streets. 

In Cadiz with its sixty-four thousand inhabitants 
are many clubs and other indications that this is a 
city for residence only. 

Little business is apparent. The people are wealthy 
and indolent. 

Again the commercial instinct of our philosophic 
guide asserts itself. Leading the way to an extensive 
warehouse, he pointed with pride to rows of the huge 
tuns of wine, ranged side by side, perhaps a hundred 
or more. " The largest wine-cellar in the whole 
world," quoth he ; " the wine itself, — delicious. Try 
it. See for yourself. And if you want to take away 
any, — the owner, he is an old friend of mine. Perhaps. 
You don't want any? Nothing like this in all Spain. 
No?" 

And yet, after all, he is so zealous, so knowing and 
so efficient that maybe his eagerness was disinterested. 
Quien Sdbe? 

The main point of interest in Cadiz, is — Cadiz. 
Beyond this the Cathedral, comparatively modern, al- 
though one hundred and twenty-seven years occupied 



118 Spain of To-Day 

its erection, is most attractive, with its interior entirely 
finished in marble. 

One of the most beautiful features of the city is the 
public park filled with a rare collection of trees, flowers 
and shrubs. 

In another smaller promenade, a drago tree is 
pointed out as five hundred years old. 

In the chapel of an old nunnery, — part of which, 
with the incongruous taste of these people, is used as 
a prison, — is shown the picture on which Murillo spent 
his last efforts. In stepping backward on the scaffold- 
ing, to view the effect of his work, he fell, receiving 
fatal injuries. 

The reviving taste of the salt spray after the many 
days in the arid country, the quaint old city with its 
cleanliness and peculiarity of appearance and setting, 
the glimpse of a better and less indolent peasantry, all 
made the tiresome trip from Sevilla well worth while. 

Back to the Hotel de Madrid to-night, whence the 
road of our travels leads to Malaga. 



MALAGA 

WE have thought it well from time to time 
to curb "El Sabio's" inordinate ad- 
miration for his country. When he has 
gone into raptures over some truly won- 
derful bit of architecture, or grandiloquently extolled 
the marvels of some royal residence, we have quoted 
examples elsewhere. One day in Toledo he remarked 
with uncommon emphasis upon the munificence of the 
builders of the Hotel Castilla. 

" Two millions of pesetas," quoth he. 

"Humph," says Mr. T •. "What do you sup- 
pose Americans are expending on one railway 
station ? " 

" One cannot tell," replies the Senor cautiously. 
" They say in America money flows like water. Per- 
haps five millions of pesetas. Yes ? " 

" One hundred million dollars, — five hundred million 
pesetas," announces Mr. T remorselessly. 

The Senor grasps his brow. 

His glance was discreetly polite, but voluble. He 
did not at once recover, but later, when perchance we 
spoke disparagingly of the barren prospect of inland 
Spain and he reiterated his promises to show us a " mil- 
lion olive trees in one grove," we regretted his fall. 
However, after the trip to Malaga it is becoming that 
we should bear evidence that the Senor was not so far 
out in his estimate after all. 

119 



120 Spain of To-Day 

The fertile plains stretching to the Sierra de Ronda 
contained many a forest of countless numbers, whose 
bright green foliage afforded a welcome relief from the 
barren lands of the north. Here also were herds upon 
herds of cattle, sheep and hogs, while a thrifty peas- 
antry worked ceaselessly in the fields. The sight of 
forty-one teams of oxen plowing side by side suggested 
the breadth and activity of our own western farms. 

Much to the satisfaction of the inner man, after sev- 
eral hours' run from Sevilla, the train stopped at Bo- 
badilla, which is a junction of four or five roads. 
Situated off here in the plains, it has a surprisingly 
modern appearance with its underground passages to 
the tracks and its exceptional restaurant. 

Ere the train pulled out, the courier had the bag- 
gage transferred to a front compartment to which we 
repaired, and seated ourselves in the bow windows af- 
fording observation ahead. " El Sabio's " manner, — 
by now well learned, — prepared one for something 
" grand, beautiful, magnificent," and we began to look 
up adjectives in the " Ingles-Espafiol " to appease 
him. 

Shortly we approached the foothills of the moun- 
tains, and the slow, puffing engine took us to higher 
grades and wilder scenery. The fertile fields were left 
behind; the outlook was barren, rough and rocky. 

Anon we plunged noisily into a tunnel and shortly 
emerged into the sunlight beyond. Again we were in 
darkness with the roaring of the train making conver- 
sation impossible, but whenever we emerged the pano- 
rama had become more wild and more beautiful until 



Malaga 121 

finally, as if through a curtain, we burst sud- 
denly upon the full magnificence of a tropical 
land. 

Directly beneath us, the gorge plunged precipitously 
to the rushing Guadalahorce, a silver thread at that 
great depth; above rose snow-capped peaks, grand in 
their impressive majesty. Ahead stretched the fair 
valley blossoming to the waters of the mountains and 
to the kindly sun of the south. 

Such an instant comparison between totally differ- 
ing lands and climates is hardly to be found elsewhere 
and is not to be described by word of tongue or pen. 
Until engineering skill and daring pierced the crags 
with eighteen tunnels and made a way for the road of 
iron, the gorge itself was impassable. 

As the train approaches Malaga, through the smil- 
ing valley, the scene is most pleasing. One asks one- 
self if this can really be a part of the Spain left so 
shortly behind, but as the town is reached, with its old, 
unattractive buildings and the dirty, unkempt appear- 
ance of the poorer quarters and the poorer people, 
prominently in evidence, one concludes after all that 
the same race has abode here. 

Yet Malaga affords much of interest and attract- 
iveness. There is a thrift in the very atmosphere that 
the dried core of the country knows not. The salty 
invigoration of the south winds has quickened a bit 
the sleeping people ; the transforming touch of the sea 
bringing its contact with other lands has awakened 
them with the magic wand of trade. They are indus- 
trious in the fields, the orchards and the vineyards ; 



122 Spain of To-Day 

they braid in the homes, and labor on the docks and on 
the sea. The reputation of their industries has 
gone around the world, not so much, perhaps, by 
reason of their thrift, as for the natural advan- 
tages of their land which they could hardly refuse to 
develop. 

The town itself is not well situated; it is low, less 
clean and more poorly built than even many another 
Spanish city. But here, following the exception of the 
other towns of the coast, there is real activity, some- 
thing beyond the mere exertion of existence. 

One industry — of peculiar interest to Mr. T , is 

the manufacture of hats from straw, the Malaga hats 
famous for their cheapness and known all over the 
world, and particularly to every worker in the fields of 
our country at least. 

This is distinctly a home industry. The straw is 
grown and garnered in the near-by fields, and after 
proper curing is taken into the dwellings to be braided 
into hats. Here, again, the effort of the weaker sex 
is paramount. It is a common occurrence, looking 
through the open doorways, to perceive women and 
girls industriously braiding the never-ending piles of 
head wear. Fourteen cents a dozen they receive for 
the finished article and a good day's work is six hats 
ready for the collector. That is, — seven cents for a 
day's labor. 

To one woman, obligingly answering the many ques- 
tions, Mr. T gave a bit of silver to recompense 

her for the distraction from her work. Her surprise 
and delight in perceiving the unusual amount, — 




to 

72 



- 
< 



Malaga 123 

maybe five pesetas, — were pathetic and afforded much 
reflection. 

Regularly the collector makes his rounds and de- 
livers his piles of merchandise to the exporter who 
sends them, for the most part, to America. Three 
hundred thousand dozen a year this little town and 
its suburbs supply for home and abroad. 

Over in America the hats are taken from the bales, 
sorted and cased to meet the requirements of the 
trade. After the several commissions are paid and 
the freight and duty settled, Malaga hats are sold in 
American markets for from fifty cents to one dollar 
a dozen, and even the lowest price represents quite an 
advance over the fourteen cents obtained by the hum- 
ble manufacturers. 

One so quickly becomes accustomed to many things, 
and a Sunday in Malaga found our party following 
the gay throng to the Plaza de Toros. This particu- 
lar day's affair, outside of the butchery, was a bur- 
lesque performance, although probably not so in- 
tended. As the bulls were little fellows, — two-year- 
olds, they seemed, — the management featured for the 
stellar attraction a rotund darky of the true clown 
type, whose proper desire to keep his skin whole, shown 
by his rolling eyes when the sharp horns came too 
near, was extremely droll. 

Malaga presents the extremes of life. The ordinary 
sections of the town are quite as slovenly and as un- 
attractive as anything we have seen. In the better 
quarter, however, there is one of the finest avenues to 
be found in the whole of Spain. With its breadth of 



124 Spain of To-Day 

a full hundred feet, its promenade through tropical 
foliage guarded by lines of royal palms and flanked 
by beautiful residences, one seeks in vain to recall its 
peer. 

That the trades of Malaga have flourished and its 
merchants have prospered is evidenced by the palatial 
dwellings so frequently seen in the town and its en- 
virons. In the Calle de la Victoria, for all the gener- 
ous frontage and imposing grounds surrounding the 
modern mansions, land is exorbitantly high. 

Back in the suburbs we found one of the most at- 
tractive villas imaginable. The house was of stone, 
low and rambling, with a wonderful pergola. Nature 
contributed largely to the fascinating possibilities of 
the grounds. A stream from the near-by mountains, 
first seen in a marvellous waterfall, furnished a never- 
ending supply for artistic little lakes and fanciful foun- 
tains, while indigenous plants and shrubs af- 
forded unlimited opportunity for the landscape gar- 
dener. 

Malaga has many fine clubs and cafes, and so num- 
erous are its outdoor loiterers that in the fashionable 
promenade, regular attendants scurry about to col- 
lect charges for the seats. 

A picturesque touch is given to the inner harbor by 
the fishers' dwellings just beyond the docks where are 
moored the stately merchantmen and the heavy freight- 
ers, while still further along the shore winds a beau- 
tiful drive near the lapping waters of the blue Mediter- 
ranean. 



GRANADA 

THE way to Granada leads back along the 
gorge of the Hoyo de Chorro and the valley 
of the Guadalahorce to the junction of Boba- 
dilla, when, swinging northward and to the 
east, the road crosses the fertile fields of the flatlands 
thickly grown with olive trees planted in precise regu- 
larity, which presently give way to orange groves and 
plantations of the sugar beet. Train upon train were 
seen loaded with this vegetable, en route to the Gra- 
nada factories, while at the stations were immense 
loads of oranges packing for the market. 

One approaches Granada with the full solemnity of 
history pressing upon him. Everything here suggests 
the Moors, and as you come to this land of their great- 
est power in Spain, a rapid survey of their coming, 
accession and fall sweeps before your mind. 

As their full tide began its ebb, the Moslem hosts 
yielded reluctantly the northern country to the con- 
quering Spaniards and entrenched their diminished 
forces in the fair fields under the shadow of the Alham- 
bra, within whose well-nigh impregnable ramparts 
they expended their last vain efforts to preserve a foot- 
hold in a land that had ceased to be foreign soil. With 
their weakening rule, Toledo, Cordoba, Sevilla, Mal- 
aga had, in turn, passed from their control to Spanish 

125 



126 Spain of To-Day 

sovereignty, although centuries elapsed in their con- 
quest. 

The greatest of Moorish power, wealth, enlighten- 
ment and profligacy had centered under the pinnacle 
of the Alhambra and the town and plain below held 
their last camps. In their disseminating empire, Gra- 
nada remained the last rock upon which, for a space, 
stranded the parting hope of the Moors. With their 
own craftiness turned against themselves, with their 
treachery to each other, gathering its fruit upon their 
falling courts, with the freedom of their practices 
finally encompassing the ruin of the last house of their 
rulers, nevertheless their ultimate abandonment of the 
fair land they were so loath to leave, has its pathetic 
appeal. 

Like many another story of a vanishing race, the 
last chapter in the Moslem rule in Spain witnessed the 
fruition of a nation's weakness. 

With a breaking empire plain before him, Abu'l 
Hassan turned his thoughts from his nation's dire need 
to his own pleasures and abandoned his good wife 
Aisha for the charms of a beautiful Spanish slave, Xo- 
rayah, " The Morning Star." A prey to his passions, 
the house of Abu'l Hassan divided against him, and his 
own son, revolting against his father, became the last 
of the Moors to wield the sceptre, where for centuries 
his people had ruled and prospered. 

Boabdil himself, weak and vacillating, crafty in that 
he betrayed the neighboring cities of his faith to the 
encroaching Spaniards, saw too late that he had only 
surrendered the outposts of his final citadel to a foe 



Granada 127 

that would not be denied. Marshalling the remnants 
of his mighty hosts he made a last stand in the Al- 
hambra, but surrounded by an overwhelming force, re- 
lentless and now sure of their purpose, he yielded an 
almost impregnable fortress with but a show of re- 
sistance, making sure only that he might accomplish 
his own escape. 

It is said that as Boabdil fled with his mother and 
others who had remained faithful, he halted on the 
heights of the Sierras for a look at the last strong- 
hold of the mighty empire he was forever abandoning. 
Overcome with emotion he gazed at the fair valley 
and the noble ramparts, so long the home of his peo- 
ple, but Aisha sternly bade him " weep not like a 
woman for what he could not defend like a man." 

As the train winds through the foothills, the lofty 
peaks of the Sierra Nevadas loom up in front, the high- 
est rising eleven thousand feet above the level of the 
sea. Presently the wondrous valley of the Vega is laid 
before you like a map, the most fruitful land in all 
Spain. The road follows for a while the barren side 
of the plain and gives a view of the flatland nearly a 
score of miles long and almost as wide, banked at one 
side by the foothills of the Sierras and cut in the 
center by the dried bed of the Vega. 

This plain is a veritable garden of the south, plenti- 
fully watered by the diverted channels of the river and 
dotted here and there over its entire area by the 
white-walled hamlets of half a hundred villages. On 
the slopes opposite rises the city of Granada, above 



128 Spain of To-Day 

which the massive ramparts and heavy towers of the 
Alhambra brood like a sentinel on watch. As the road 
traverses the valley — which to the eye seems perfectly 
flat — an intimate view of the fields is given, dis- 
closing a most luxuriant growth of vegetation and 
tropical fruits. 

From the station, a two-mile drive up the hill takes 
one to the Hotel Washington Irving, close upon the 
grounds of the Alhambra. This hotel is a long, ram- 
bling structure, three stories high, owing its name, if 
not its being, to the author who dwelt in Granada in 
1828 and the few succeeding years. To prove it all, 
a large picture of Irving hangs in the office; tales 
galore have been handed down and are recounted of 
the writer and the love which the people of Spain and 

particularly of Granada bore him. Indeed, Mr. T 

was assigned " the very rooms where he lived and 
wrote," for a few weeks before an appreciative govern- 
ment renovated a suite for him within the walls of the 
Alhambra. 

During the recent unpleasantness, anything Amer- 
ican or suggestive thereof achieved unpopularity so 
great that even the name of the hotel was changed, 
signs were torn down, and beloved as was the name of 
Irving it was for the time forgotten. When the clouds 
of war had cleared away, however, the past came to 
its own again and once more flourished the kindly 
hostelry with its name as of yore and with its appeal 
to the strangers from across the sea. 

Be that as it may, Mr. T describes his rooms 

as the best since leaving New York, with their cheer- 



Granada 129 

ful outlook, companionable fireplaces and rich furnish- 
ings in blue. 

As a whole, Granada presents a rather complex ap- 
pearance to-day. Its older part, like Toledo, is emi- 
nently a city of the past. There its great wealth, 
power and beauty have faded for all time ; it has filled 
its page in the world's history and is hardly to be re- 
juvenated. 

The crumbling walls may be rebuilt, but they will 
not again hold the wealth of a mighty race; the ram- 
parts of the Alhambra are not likely to shield again the 
court of a powerful empire. 

In the new section towards the valley, — Granada 
proper, — one finds a modern city with every appear- 
ance of thrift and prosperity. The wonderful re- 
sources of the country have brought wealth to the 
people, their trade has expanded and with its grow- 
ing needs a new city is rising almost from the very 
ashes of the old. Modern, steel-framed structures are 
building on every hand; up-to-date customs and con- 
veniences are everywhere apparent, so that a bit of the 
new world is coming to this fertile valley of the an- 
cient Moors. 

The location of Granada is of exceptional advantage 
and beauty. Nowhere else, inland, in the whole Iber- 
ian Peninsula is the outlook so pleasing. From the 
heights of the Alhambra gazing towards the Sierras 
one sees winter and summer in close proximity ; a 
mere five-mile stretch of land separates the snowy 
peaks from fields as blossoming as our country in June. 
The view down the valley is one beyond compare, with 



130 Spain of To-Day 

the verdant vegetation and the snug little towns set 
in the fields of green. 

In the city itself there is a most confused conglom- 
eration of dwellings from the caves of the gypsies to 
the modern houses of the merchants. Not long since 
a Spanish tradesman, prospering from the sale of his 
wares, purchased an old Moorish palace, located in 
the heart of the business quarter. Curious to establish 
the limits of his venture, he caused the rubbish to be 
excavated and the plaster to be taken away. Much to 
his surprise and delight his efforts were rewarded by 
the discovery of a marvellous little chapel, with its 
wonderful mosaics and carvings still intact, which 
now serves as an excellent office and showroom. Surely 
his competitors have nothing so wonderful in which 
to display their goods and the curious bring to him 
as well many pesetas for a mere look at the place. 

A branch of the Genii runs for a distance beneath 
the busiest of the city's streets, and close to where it 
emerges begins a broad promenade set off by fine 
palms and other tropical foliage. Beyond this is a 
beautiful bronze of Columbus supplicating Isobella 
for means to pursue his discoveries. 

The Cathedral, a striking memorial to the Chris- 
tian accession of Southern Spain, affords, perhaps, 
the best example of faultless architecture to be found 
in this country if not in Europe. The interior, with 
its length of three hundred and eighty feet, breadth 
of two hundred and twenty, and height of one hun- 
dred, is grand and imposing. Massive columns sup- 
port the loftly, vaulted ceiling, while no two of the in- 



Granada 131 

tervening arches are alike. Here are the tombs of 
Ferdinand and Isobella, bearing beautiful marble 
monuments. Below is the vault containing their re- 
mains. 

Leaving the Cathedral a short walk takes one 
through the old Moorish bazaar with its quaint shops 
and houses, which constitutes the present day shop- 
ping district. The tradespeople are as active as bees 
in a clover field. 

A little uncommon excursion after lunch afforded 
a most amusing character study and, perhaps, an ex- 
ample of the guile of our careless travellers. 

A short distance from the Alhambra, on a mountain 
6ide looking towards the beautiful plain, is located a 
wonderful estate whose Castle, situated near the top, 
enraptures one with the view, from one side over the 
intervening terraces to the Valley of the Vega, and 
from the other to the majestic summits of the Sierras. 

Its origin or history matter not — imagination can 
picture as fair and perhaps as true a tale as could be 
discovered here — but the present incumbent is a court- 
eous gentleman of French extraction whose many 
mines in the near-by ranges make a residence close at 
hand desirable, while at leisure moments between the 
exigencies of his business duties he finds opportunity 
to further beautify his wonderful estate and in this 
bit of Eden to devote his efforts to a hobby for col- 
lecting rare and beautiful works of art. 

This gentleman was most hospitable, inviting an in- 
spection of his premises and supplementing his wel- 
come with a generous offering of rare old wine. 



132 Spain of To-Day 

The grounds are as beautiful as an excellent taste 
and unlimited natural opportunity can make them. 
The castle itself is of more than ordinary attractive- 
ness, but within its walls is crowded a marvellous col- 
lection of tapestries, paintings, armor, statuary and 
all manner of works of art. Wonderful objects, an- 
cient and modern, fill the rooms and corridors with 
more than pleasing profusion. 

One has the natural desire to possess many an in- 
teresting bit, but hesitates even to offer the suggestion, 
with proper recompense, to so courteous a nobleman. 
A most interesting pair of blunderbusses attract Mr. 
T , who, although he would have preferred some- 
thing more precious, concluded that in such a profu- 
sion these modest objects might not be missed. The 
suggestion reaches the ever attentive ear of " El 
Sabio," who presently returns from a rather heated 
conversation with the " nobleman," to say that " that 
gentleman would not bother to sell anything un- 
less a matter of several thousand pesetas was in- 
volved." 

The goal of all travel in Spain is Granada and the 
soul of Granada is the Alhambra with its lingering 
memories of ancient power and splendor. 

The city rises above the plain, and five hundred feet 
higher still the Alhambra crowns a hilltop, whose 
walls on one side fall sheer to the roads below while 
from the other a steep declivity leads to the town. 
Around about the buildings stretches a forest of won- 
derful beauty, comprising full three thousand acres, 




< 

Q 
- 



< 

— 
< 



Granada 133 

to which, repute has it, Lord Wellington contributed 
no mean share. 

In wandering through the many courts, corridors 
and halls of the Alhambra one loses himself, if not in 
the exquisite beauties of the place, at least in dreams 
of its former magnificence. The mosaics, the carving, 
the painted walls and marble-paved courts are fully as 
wonderful as in the Royal Alcazares in Sevilla but are 
here in even greater profusion. To my mind the gar- 
den of the Alcazares is the one bright beauty spot in 
inland Spain, but in the Alhambra there is infinitely 
more to revel in. Small wonder that Washington 
Irving found such a charming abode among the veiled 
legends of the past, made ever more real by an intimate 
association with their surroundings. 

The massive buildings of the Alhambra and the de- 
tached towers in the walls cover a considerable area. 
Near at hand is an uncompleted palace which Charles 
V. began, to eclipse anything of its like in the world. 
With the huge, ring-like structure of the main part, 
lacking its roof, it gives an impression of the too com- 
mon Plazas de Toros. 

It is hoped, however, that Alfonso will finish the 
work begun by his predecessor and thus add Spam's 
mite to the crowning glory of the Alhambra. 

Lingering, we watched the light fade from the town 
at our feet, as the long shadows crept along the val- 
ley, but as dusk obscured the streets below, the mina- 
rets and the lofty towers stood out clear in the evening 
light, while a parting ray from the setting sun kissed 
the hoary heads of the majestic Sierras. 



134 Spain of To-Day 

Roused from our meditations, we hastened across 
the way to our cheery hostelry and were barely within 
its doors when we were greeted by the elder Driscolls. 
It seems that the party had followed our footsteps 
since we parted from them in Madrid and we at once 
entered into a lively comparison of our impressions of 
the places we had all so recently seen. 

In this fashion time passed quickly, the announce- 
ment of dinner alone bringing a realization of the hour. 
With it Mrs. Driscoll remarked to her husband, " It 
is surely time they returned. I wonder what possibly 
could have delayed them." 

Inferring that she spoke of the rest of the party 
we inquired where they had gone and were concerned to 
learn that the four, under the guidance of the Eng- 
lishman who had earlier visited Granada, had driven to 
the gypsy quarter of the Albaicin. 

Excusing myself with a casual remark, I at once 
sought out Befiunes, who expressed considerable anxiety 
at the intelligence. Hastily throwing on his great 
coat and taking a heavy stick he bade me get any 
weapon I might have and join him at the side entrance 
of the hotel, avoiding, if possible, any of the party 
in so doing. 

Hurrying to my room I dug out a Colt thirty-eight 
from my bag, and grabbing a loose handful of cart- 
ridges, sauntered carelessly down the rear stairway, 
but as I made for the door ran plump into Mr. 
T . 

Having no alternative, I explained the nature of our 
expedition and with difficulty persuaded him to remain 



Granada 135 

and allay any fears that the Driscolls might have if 
they learned of our departure. 

Benunes was impatiently waiting in a light two- 
seated rig drawn by a pair of wiry little horses whose 
driver I could but dimly make out in the poor light. As 
I took my seat beside him he spoke sharply and we 
started off at a speed that would have precluded con- 
versation even had we felt so inclined. As a matter of 
fact we were both weighed with anxiety. The gypsy 
quarter of the Albaicin was well known to Benunes, 
who had often told me of queer happenings to foreign- 
ers straying among them without proper escort. At 
the time, I had let these tales pass as casual stories 
circulated for the benefit of strangers, but as we 
bumped across the raised street over the Darro and 
swung to the right up Calle de San Juan, I recalled 
vividly the atrocities he had spoken of. 

Following a most perplexing course, our horses flee- 
ing before the merciless whip of the cochero, we turned 
this way and that at imminent risk of upsetting, trav- 
ersing passages so narrow that it seemed as if we must 
stick between the walls before we emerged into others 
equally forbidding. Presently the way became more 
steep and our pace slackened. 

Passing San Nicolas and San Salvador, whose som- 
bre walls looked grim and desolate in the dusk, we 
found ourselves in the heart of the gypsy settlement 
and were at once besieged by a horde of ragged little 
beggars. 

With Benunes' stick effectually clearing a way we 
jumped from the carriage and hurried up a dark and 



136 Spain of To-Day 

forbidding road whose chief light was furnished by 
the openings to the caves lining one side of the ter- 
race — the only habitations about. 

I have often remarked on Benunes' wonderful knowl- 
edge even of the most remote parts of his country, but 
that night it seemed as if animal instinct alone could 
have taken us where he led without once faltering or 
turning back. 

Many looked at us curiously, and not a few of the 
ruffianly fellows hanging around the cave doors started 
to follow. There is no doubt in my mind that only 
Benunes' size and vociferous use of their own tongue 
saved us from several encounters, and I must con- 
fess even then that there was a most companion- 
able feel to the butt of that Colt in my outside 
pocket. 

Night had now fallen and a cloudy sky made the 
road look all the more black and menacing. Soon, 
however, we stopped before a more pretentious dwell- 
ing, which, dimly seen, appeared to be a renovation of 
some old stone palace, and I have no doubt that such 
was the case. 

An illy-dressed woman with long, unrestrained black 
hair, came into the light of the open door in response 
to our knock and at a word from Benunes called to 
some one within. A man's gruff voice answered and 
presently its owner appeared, a lithe, swarthy-looking 
fellow, fully as tall as Benunes but lacking his breadth 
of shoulder and weight. 

Although I had barely exchanged a word with the 
courier since we started and knew nothing definitely 



Granada 137 

of his plans, I instinctively judged the man before us 
to be the gypsy " king," and so I afterwards found 
to be the case. 

The conversation which followed, spoken rapidly, 
partly in Spanish and at times in the patois of the 
gypsies, I could only guess at, although the inflection 
of the speakers and their gesticulations now and then 
gave a clue. 

It is a curious fact that even the mildest topic is 
discussed by Spaniards in a manner which is seemingly 
the prelude to knives or pistols, and as the voices of the 
two rose in the heat of their talk I involuntarily edged 
closer with my right hand held " carelessly " in my 
pocket. 

Presently Beiiunes seemed to gain his way, whatever 
that might be, and the gypsy, turning sharply on his 
heel, was gone for a moment, reappearing with the 
coat and hat he had previously lacked. 

As we threaded the dark terraces, the slinking fig- 
ures fell back at a growl or a blow from our companion. 
Once or twice we stopped while he questioned some he 
had recognized. Other than this we proceeded swiftly 
but in a silence which to me, at least, became tense 
with suppressed excitement. 

All at once, directly before us, a revolver shot a 
vicious white flame into the darkness, and close upon 
the report a mufHed voice called in English. We broke 
into a run. 

Before us a shifting crowd were evidently preparing 
to rush the closed door of a cave. A dozen or so held 
a heavy stake levelled at the doorway and were just 



138 Spain of To-Day 

gaining impetus as Benunes' stick beat upon the fore- 
most, causing them to let go their hold and turn upon 
him. 

I have no doubt that fully half a hundred were in 
that dark mob. Their shouts and curses filled the air, 
and even in the darkness we caught the glint of a knife 
here and there. 

They were in a fine passion which the manner of our 
interruption was not calculated to soothe. For a 
moment it looked as though we were in a nasty mess, 
as Benunes and I backed to the door with our weapons 
ready, but just here the " king " began to assert him- 
self, and it needed no familiarity with the language to 
sense the oaths and imprecations he hurled at them as 
they pressed around us. 

Once in a close corner, south of Cape Cod, I was un- 
der the impression that the language of a certain sea- 
captain was voluble and to the point, but there was 
something about that gypsy's conversation, in the 
sharp hiss of his words or the steely menace of his 
tone, that made your shoulder blades involuntarily 
shrink together as if a knife was stealing towards you 
out of the darkness. 

At first angry voices answered him, but as he took a 
menacing step towards them the crowd slunk away 
before him and, like the cowards they were, disap- 
peared in the darkness. 

As the last muttering figure was lost we turned 
to the door. It swung back, and Dalghren and Hale 
appeared in the light while close behind them were 
the strained, anxious faces of the two girls. 



Granada 139 

We gained the carrriage without mishap and near by 
were fortunate to find another rig. Liberally reward- 
ing the " king," and bidding him a hearty farewell we 
set out for the hotel. 

It was agreed that Benunes and I should quietly 
seek our rooms before the others arrived and that no 
mention be made of the affair, which really had had 
no serious ending, notwithstanding its possibilities. 
Sometime should you run across Miss Driscoll again, 
— who will not be Miss Driscoll when you see her, — 
ask her to tell you of her evening in the Albaicin. She 
will undoubtedly scold me should she see this, but it 
may save some other traveller from a similar experi- 
ence, and for that I trust she will forgive me. 



VALENCIA 

MINE host prepared most elaborately to 
speed the parting guest. His own special 
equipage waited before the door, — a car- 
riage half way between a coach and a 'bus, 
— drawn by a fine pair of mules, such as this country 
alone produces, with a spirited pair of horses as 
leaders. With their gay trappings and with the car- 
riage strikingly finished in the light natural wood, 
the whole made a very gallant show to which the 
driver contributed no small part. It is the custom in 
Granada for a gentleman to tool his own four-in-hand, 
but on this occasion mine host yielded his position to 
a most excellent whip. 

Mr. T occupied the seat of honor by the driver 

and off started the team at a most precarious speed. 
With the horses dancing and the curling whip crack- 
ing like pistol shots even the native Granadians turned 
to look and marvel. 

The drive to the station, leading northward, is fully 
two miles from the hotel and was by far the pleas ant- 
est part of a very tedious journey. 

Teste I What a railroad trip ! 

Listen. Leaving Granada at 1 :40 o'clock in the af- 
ternoon, the train ran north and west toward Alcazar, 

140 



Valencia 141 

requiring us to change once at eight in the evening, 
and arriving at Alcazar at 1 :45 o'clock in the coldest 
night experienced there in many years. The oldest 
inhabitant being snugly ensconced, it was learned 
that no such cold had been observed for a decade. And, 
mind you, this trip was made in an ordinary coach, 
rough, unheated and uncomfortable. A happy traveli 
ler's chief assets are patience and fortitude, but these 
had long since been routed by cold and hunger and 
were hardly to be coaxed back by insipid tea and sweet 
cakes in the old barn of a station where one was forced 
to wait until another train pulled in, at the dismal 
hour of 3:30, and still no sleeping car. Oh, these 
Spaniards ! 

As morning broke, the way was still barren, flat and 
uninteresting, and doubly so after a night of intermit- 
tent naps, while not even the facilities of washing af- 
forded opportunity for some refreshment. As the day 
wore on, the prospect was still more lugubrious, but 
towards noon the train ran into a more fertile country, 
broken with ridges and indicating the proximity of the 
coast. Thousands and thousands of orange trees 
weighted with fruit enlivened the valleys with their 
appearance of thrift and prosperity. 

Anon, attention was called to the castles and for- 
tifications crowning the heights. Moorish they were 
and most fantastic were the sites where at prodigious 
expenditure of labor these fortresses were built; some- 
times in isolation, often in such numbers even as to 
form towns completely encircled by the walls. Fre- 
quently they were fully one thousand to two thousand 



142 Spain of To-Day 

feet above the level of the road and in one instance a 
whole ridge two miles in length was surmounted by the 
massive ramparts. 

Presently, as the train pulled into a little station, 
it seemed as if the travellers were to be fallen upon 
by a force of desperate bandits. Fully half a hundred 
men crowded the platform as the train approached and 
rushed towards the compartments as it came to a 
stop, all ferocious in appearance and each heavily 
armed with wicked-looking daggers. The number of 
their weapons, however, dispelled the alarm and gave 
the suggestion that after all they might be only ven- 
dors carrying their wares about with them. Indeed, 
many had stuck in their belts upward of a score each 
of these daggers in all manner of shapes and de- 
signs. 

As the train was following the direct route from 
Madrid to Alicante on the coast, a junction was 
shortly reached whence the way led north, closely fol- 
lowing the trend of the water's edge. This part of 
the trip by itself might perchance have been delightful, 
but it excited little interest from a party wearied by 
twenty-eight hours of continuous discomfort, and, if 
the truth must be told, it was a rather disgruntled set 
of travellers who alighted at the Valencia station at 
six in the evening and made all possible haste to the 
refreshing baths and welcome couches of the Grand 
Hotel Continental. 

Valencia is a town of trade and activity. It is not 
a city of antiquity in its present-day appearance, 
although it has many a mark of ancient days, now all 



Valencia 143 

but lost in the modern structures that have sprung 
up around them, like the second growth of timber on 
a burned mountain side. Its people are healthily 
active. There is a bustle in the markets, and on the 
streets a roar of heavily laden trucks that speak of 
trade and prosperity. 

You should go, perhaps first of all, to the open mar- 
ket, busy as a beehive. Here everything conceivable 
in the way of produce is displayed for sale and, rather 
peculiarly, you find that every seller, every attendant, 
is a woman. So, also, for the most part are the mar- 
keters. There is no question about woman's rights 
and privileges here. 

This open market of Valencia is immense, and yet it 
is none too large for the booths, stands and counters 
crowded confusedly within its walls. Fowls are dis- 
played alive in cages, and as the buyer selects her bird 
it is taken from the cage by the attendant and killed 
and dressed while she waits. 

At a little distance from this busy center is the 
large wholsale market where the men find employment 
in displaying their samples of grain, silk and what-not 
in the way of produce and manufacture. This market 
much resembles our produce exchanges. 

As one approaches the harbor of Valencia, which is 
at some distance from the center of the city, the great- 
est activity is observed. The streets leading to the 
docks are fairly choked with trucks, drays, push-carts 
and in fact all manner of wagons loaded with the pro- 
duce of the country for foreign shipment. Lining 
the docks are craft of all sizes and descriptions, from 



144 Spain of To-Day 

the Mediterranean coasters to big transatlantic steam- 
ers, loading for the ports of the western hemisphere. 

The long arms of the busy derricks swing ceaselessly 
to carry their loads to the insatiate maws of the wait- 
ing steamers. The donkey engines " chutter " like 
rapid firers; deck hands, 'longshoremen and truckmen 
scurry hither and yon to the eager cries of the officers. 
Everywhere is a scene of activity that would do credit 
to any land and of particular interest when one has 
traversed the length and breadth of this country of 
most indolent affairs. 

It is most fascinating to pick out and identify the 
flags of all nations floating lazily from taffrail and 
peak; the red and yellow of Spain; the tri-color of 
neighboring France; the union jack of sturdy Eng- 
land — in great plenty — ; the bright bunting of Italy; 
the flag of Austria, of Holland, of Scandinavia, and 
of Portugal. But you miss something; you scan the 
long line back and forth; yes, there it is at last — the 
good old Stars and Stripes — and what if it is on a 
single tramp. Oh, for the days of the Salem clippers, 
when our merchant marine invested every civilized port 
— and some that were not — and told the old world of 
the strong young nation across the waters. 

Chief of the products of Valencia are its oranges. 
We have it from an employee in the local branch of the 
" Credit Lyonnais " that this province each year grows 
and exports crops to the value of 60,000,000 
pesetas. 

There are many fine and beautiful villas in and 



Valencia 



145 



around Valencia, homes of the wealthy merchants and 
aristocrats. The old walls of the city have some time 
since been torn down and where they stood are to-day 
attractive boulevards and parks, ever thronged on 
pleasant afternoons with fine equipages. 




BARCELONA 

MUCH to one's surprise and satisfaction the 
run to Barcelona is made in an excellent 
train. Most of the way follows closely the 
shore of the Mediterranean; on the op- 
posite side of the tracks rise the jutting spurs of the 
mountains and close at hand are the wonderful 
groves of orange trees. The scenery is delightful and 
pleasing for the full two hundred and twenty-seven 
miles which are covered in about nine hours, while, 
wonderful to relate, the train arrives on time. 

Valencia and this run prepare one in a measure for 
the largest and most thrifty of Spain's cities. Of 
Spain, did I say? Should you by chance remark to 
the polite and communicative native of this flourishing 
province, " You are Spanish," invariably comes the 
response, " But no, sir. We are Catalonians," and not 
a little of commendable pride goes with it. 

Madrid, of practically the same population, power- 
ful in its royalty and wealth, seems of another land 
and, one almost feels, of another race. 

How true it is that the " best " of all lands in some 
way resemble each other, and equally true that from 
the " people " a province or a city draws its character. 
Here, in Cataluna, you may look in vain for degener- 
acy and pathetic poverty. All is brightness, thrift 
and activity. The city of Barcelona will compare 

146 



Barcelona 147 

with any in the world; its avenues are fully as beau- 
tiful as the boulevards of Paris ; its buildings are as 
fine on their smaller scale, while its people have caught 
the sunshine of the south in their very natures, glow- 
ing with spirit and good fellowship, and yet withal 
they have not lost the love of freedom and independ- 
ence. 

It is really quite an accomplishment to " see " a 
city properly, to reserve the attractive peculiarities for 
future delving and not at once to be diverted from 
the first broad comprehensive view by the many little 
oddities that constantly invite you to one side. One 
who travels and studies, like Stoddard and many an- 
other, for the benefit of his fellows, deserves as well our 
respect and sympathy. To make a business of this 
most enjoyable occupation is often, to my mind, to 
detract from its greatest charm and that is to gain 
your impressions casually and carelessly, not forcedly. 
And yet one who travels and neglects his opportunities 
for closer acquaintance with the strange ways and 
foreign customs, misses at the same time much that 
might add to his own education. 

Through the very heart of old Barcelona threads 
that most unique and beautiful of passages, El Ram- 
bla. Like the boulevard which begins at the Church 
of the Madeleine and every now and then changes its 
name, so the Rambla takes on new suffixes as it pro- 
ceeds. In its center is a broad promenade and on either 
side are the streets for vehicles, each having its current 
of traffic in one direction. Fine plane trees and palms 



148 Spain of To-Day 

in double rows mark the progress of the avenue which 
is bordered by most attractive shops, and here and 
there by balconied houses. 

Loitering up the Rambla one day, Benunes stopped 
at a little inn to point out the setting of an amusing 
incident just now attracting the city's attention. The 
innkeeper recently died, and although he was reputed 
to have accumulated some wealth, a careful search of 
the premises failed to disclose any trace of it. The 
heirs were brought together, some even from distant 
Gibraltar, and it was finally decided to dispose of 
the meagre effects and divide the proceeds. As the 
sale progressed an odd collection of apparently empty 
bottles was purchased by a junk dealer, who, paying 
the price of old bottles, discovered, when he came to 
clean them, that each had its horde of pennies, pesetas 
and scrip. Fifteen thousand pesetas in all he counted, 
but, incautiously boasting of his find, he paid the pen- 
alty by inviting a lawsuit for their recovery by the in- 
dignant heirs, whose merits and demerits are now be- 
ing discussed, not alone in the courts, but in every cafe 
and shop. 

At the commencement of the Rambla, near to the 
water's edge, is a mighty monument to Columbus. At 
its base are eight huge bronze lions, suggesting the 
Nelson monument in Trafalgar Square, and above that 
rises an immense shaft two hundred feet high, sur- 
mounted by a large gilded ball on which stands an 
heroic statue of the Discoverer with arm outstretched 
towards far-off America. 



Barcelona 149 

These people who aided a stranger in his great bene- 
fit to civilization; in founding a home for the young- 
est of the world's nations, destined by the eccentrici- 
ties of fate to clip the power of its benefactor; in 
bringing to them untold wealth in opportunity, have 
perpetuated his name and honor in ways that should 
make us, who bear more directly the indebtedness, blush 
with the very shame of our indifference and ingrati- 
tude. 

The docks near by are far more extensive than 
those at Valencia ; indeed Barcelona at one time divided 
the traffic of the Mediterranean with Genoa and with 
Venice, and now handles a fourth of all Spain's ex- 
port commerce. Whereas at Valencia the trade is 
practically all of freight, here there is an immense pas- 
senger traffic as well. There is no port too distant 
for her steamers busily plying the year around, while 
the vessels of other lands crowd her docks. 

Around about Barcelona there are many things to 
see. The Cathedral, well-nigh lost among the sur- 
rounding buildings, presents one of the best examples 
of Gothic architecture to be found in all Spain. The 
present church, begun seven hundred years ago, 
stands practically unaltered, — a monument to the won- 
derful workmanship of its builders. Like many an- 
other Cathedral in this country, with its rough ex- 
terior and poorly situated among close-pressing build- 
ings of later date, the extent of its interior seems far 
greater than would appear possible from its outward 



150 Spain of To-Day 

appearance. Its stained glass windows are magnifi- 
cent. 

There is, of course, the inevitable Plaza de Toros, — 
one of the largest and most showy in Spain, — and this 
stamps the race notwithstanding the protestations of 
our friend the " Catalonian." The better buildings of 
the World's Exhibition, held here not so very long 
since, have been kept up and made permanent for 
art galleries and the like. 

It is the life of the city, however, which is the chief 
attraction of Barcelona. The crowd is ever coming and 
going in light happy mood, thronging the promenades 
and drives, filling the theatres, the Opera House and 
the cafes, always gay, always bright, but, like their 
volatile neighbors, the French, capable of the deep- 
est patriotism. 

The Catalonians' love of music is well shown here 
in their Royal Opera Houses — said to be one of the 
largest in Europe, where the best artists render the 
popular works of all periods. The scene at one of the 
" best nights " is entrancing ; the ladies have that 
beauty of the south, which is more from their wonder- 
ful animation than from the contour of their features ; 
they are splendidly gowned and display perfect show- 
ers of sparkling gems. Indeed one must seek the 
great centers of the world to witness the like. 

The cafe life of Barcelona is absolutely peculiar to 
itself. The Spaniards are far from being an alcoholic 
race, — in fact, the only intoxicated man we noted in 
all Spain bumped into us on a Sevillian street, — quite 
civilly too, — su perdon. It is not, therefore, for the 



Barcelona 151 

excuse or the object of becoming intoxicated that the 
human tide of Barcelona turns in its leisure hours to 
the cafe doors. Nor is their welcome or possession of 
the choice seats dependent upon their reputation as 
free spenders. Indeed, their disbursements for an 
evening's entertainment would make a Broadway cafe 
magnate shrug his shoulders with horror. Coffee, 
chocolate and gossip are their main objects of con- 
sumption. The crowds are not, therefore, licentious, 
but the perfect freedom of their intercourse is natural 
and — here — charming. 

In the first place the Barcelona cafes are grand and 
beautiful beyond compare; not even Paris, nor Lon- 
don, nor America has their like. They are very large 
and bright, beautifully decorated and enlivened by 
the music of exceptional orchestras. Thither the peo- 
ple flock of an afternoon and more freely after opera 
and theatre, and pursue the chief social life of the city. 

It is quite the custom for a family containing mar- 
riageable daughters to frequent these cafes to attract 
the attention and court of future husbands. Such an 
unexampled plane of equality is most wonderful and 
charming to observe. When one notes how these peo- 
ple linger on until two or three in the morning, listen- 
ing to the beautiful music and contributing individu- 
ally in many cases not more than eight or ten cents, 
one thinks again of the poor innkeepers and wonders 
how the cafes can continue to furnish so elegant an ap- 
pearance and good cheer, — but there they are and in 
no small numbers, which must be sufficient proof of 
their prosperity. 



152 Spain of To-Day 

A truly delightful trip is afforded by taking the 
tramway for a couple of miles out of the city and as- 
cending the heights of Tibidabo, nearly two thousand 
feet above the sea level. Away below at your feet 
stretches the city, and around it scores of little vil- 
lages and towns dot the plain. Beyond are the blue 
waters of the ever-restless Mediterranean, while inland 
as far as you can see, rise the snow-capped peaks of 
the Pyrenees. 

That this is a most popular resort is attested by the 
very excellent cafe located at the summit, which in size 
alone rivals anything at Brighton Beach or famed 
Coney Island. 

The landscape is of surpassing beauty. Where the 
rugged contour of the country is softened to the fer- 
tile slopes and valleys the scene is freshened by the 
luxuriant tropical vegetation and brightened by the 
innumerable villas, mansions and hamlets to be seen 
in every direction. 

San Sebastien afforded a most pleasing introduc- 
tion to this land of difficult comprehension, while Bar- 
celona gives a very gracious adieu. 

It is by no means a vapid country; its impressions 
are strong, forceful and lasting, whether agreeable or 
displeasing. In part it is a country of promise; else- 
where of desolation and hopelessness. Many, many, 
indeed, are the lessons one can read between the lines 
of stern sobriety, of animal-like viciousness ; of strict 
disciplinarianism, of indolent existence ; of impoverished 
degeneracy, of joyous prosperity. 



Barcelona 153 

As our party gathered its belongings for the flight 
to Paris, our pursuant friends, the Driscolls et al., came 
to say au revoir. 

Some explanations were vouchsafed; some announce- 
ments were made in great confidence then, but of no 
secrecy now. Hale has won his way to the affections 
of the " Aunt " — I cannot speak of her otherwise, 
— while young, clean-cut Dalghren has gained the 
crown of all his desires in the faith, confidence and 
esteem of that matchless American girl. 

Ah, but her face is good to look upon, and doubly 
so in this old world, where her truthful color, clear 
steady gaze, and upright, easy carriage set her apart 
to be admired and respected. 



INDEX 



PAGE 

Abu '1 Hassan 126 

Albaicin — Granada 134 

Alcazar— Toledo 49 

Alhambra— Granada 132 

Artillery Museum— Madrid. 69 
Avila 33 

Barcelona 146-153 

Begging IT 

Biarritz 21-30 

Bobadilla 120 

Boabdil 126 

Bull Fight 40-43 

Cadiz 114-118 

Cathedral of Barcelona. ...14T 

Cathedral of Cadiz 117 

Cathedral of C6rdoba 89 

Cathedral of Granada 130 

Cathedral of Sevilla 103 

Cathedral of Toledo 52 

Cervantes' Lodging 50 

C6rdoba 80-93 

Couriers 14 

Customs 13 

Dancing 106 



PAGE 

Giralda, Sevilla 95 

Granada 125-129 

Grand Hotel Continental, 

Valencia 142 

Grand Hotel Suisse — Cor- 
doba 80 

Hendaye 13 

Hotels 16 

Hotel Castilla— Toledo 48 

Hotel de Madrid — Sevilla.. 94 
Hotel du Palais— Biarritz.. 22 
Hotel de Paris— Madrid .. . 34 
Hotel Washington Irving — 

Granada 126 



Iriin 



Language 



13 
17 



Madrid ....31-44, 53-63, 64-79 

Malaga 119-124 

Malaga Hats 122 

Mezquita— C6rdoba 83-88 

Money 15 

Museo del Prado — Madrid 

< 54, 74, 75 

Museum of Modern Arts — 
Madrid 72 



El Escorial 64-67 Parque de Madrid 78 

El Passage 25-26 Puerta del Sol— Madrid. . . 34 

El Retiro 54 Puerta del Sol— Toledo 46 

155 



156 



Index 



PAGB 

Rambla — Barcelona ..147 

Roman Bridge, Cordoba ... 90 
Royal Alcazares — Sevilla . . . 107 
Royal Armeria — Madrid . . 74 
Royal Palace — Madrid .... 76 

San Francisco el Grande; — 
Madrid 37 

San Sebastien 21-30 

Seasons — Best for Travel- 
ling 14 

Sevilla 94-113 



PAGE 

Stables of Alfonso 57 

Sud Express 12 

Tibidabo— Granada 162 

Tipping 17 

Toledo 45-53 

Toledo Blades 47 

Tower of Gold 95 

Trains 12 

Trip 10 

Valencia 140-145 



JN 18 1909 



